0:04

Hello and welcome to another episode

0:06

of the Enter the Bible podcast where

0:08

you can get answers or at least reflections

0:11

on everything you wanted to know about the Bible,

0:13

but were afraid to ask. I'm Katie Langston,

0:15

And I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker. And our

0:18

special guest again today

0:20

is Reverend Dr.

0:22

Sarah Wilson, who's a friend

0:24

of ours and a

0:27

wonderful theologian and

0:30

pastor. She is associate

0:32

pastor at Tokyo Lutheran

0:34

Church in Tokyo, Japan.

0:37

And she had to get up really early

0:39

this morning to join us on this

0:41

podcast. So thank you for joining us.

0:43

And she is a

0:46

creator and co-host of a wonderful

0:48

podcast called Queen of the Sciences,

0:50

which she does with her father, who

0:52

is also a theologian, Paul

0:55

Hinlicky, who has been a guest

0:57

on this podcast as well. So

1:00

welcome again, Sarah. Thank you so much for joining

1:02

us.

1:03

You're welcome. I'm thrilled to be here.

1:07

Uh, so our question today

1:10

comes from a listener.

1:13

And again, as usual, for

1:15

those listening or viewing us,

1:17

if you have a question about the Bible, please

1:20

go to enter the Bible. Org and

1:22

send it to us. We can't answer

1:24

all the questions that come, but we'll do our best

1:27

to address as many as possible. So

1:29

this one is: What

1:32

are the beliefs concerning?

1:34

What are current beliefs, Christian

1:36

beliefs concerning the Book of Revelation?

1:40

And this listener wants

1:43

to understand

1:45

what these beliefs

1:48

are, particularly pre millennial

1:50

ism, post millennial ism

1:52

and a millennial ism. And

1:55

just you know we were joking as

1:57

we, before

1:59

we started to record that, we're not

2:01

talking about the Millennials.

2:04

Of which Katie is one.

2:06

Not talking about Millennials.

2:07

Not talking about Millenials. We're talking about some belief

2:09

systems, about the end

2:11

of time, about

2:15

millennial ism, so Sarah, maybe

2:17

if you could start out just by defining

2:19

those terms, that would be really helpful, I think.

2:22

Right. So the reason why it sounds

2:24

like the generational term millennial

2:27

is because it refers to Millennium,

2:29

which means the thousand years or the thousand

2:31

year marker. So millennials as

2:33

a generation got that name because of when they were born.

2:36

But this millennial ism,

2:38

these sets of millennial isms from Revelation

2:41

have to do with a specific passage.

2:43

So actually, if it's okay, I'll read the passage

2:46

first because that'll make it easier to define the terms.

2:48

Yeah, sounds good.

2:49

So okay, so this is from

2:51

Revelation. Oh, and let me just say clearly

2:54

it's evelation. There's no

2:56

s at the end because this

2:58

book is one revelation

3:00

of the one Jesus Christ. If

3:02

there's anything that makes me tear

3:05

out my hair and want to stab a knife

3:07

through my heart, it's hearing people refer to the Book

3:09

of Revelations. It's just one

3:11

revelation of just one.

3:12

Only one in there. It's a really long one,

3:14

though.

3:15

You know what? As soon as I got this question, I was

3:17

like, If I say nothing else, if listeners remember

3:19

nothing else, it's going to be that it's just revelation.

3:23

Okay, I'm over it. So, okay, so this

3:25

is from Revelation chapter 20,

3:28

verses 1 to 6. I will read

3:30

it. This is from the English

3:32

Standard Version. Then I saw

3:34

an angel coming down from heaven, holding

3:36

in his hand the key to the bottomless

3:38

pit and a great chain. And he sees

3:41

the dragon, that ancient serpent who

3:43

is the devil and Satan, and bound him

3:45

for a thousand years

3:47

and threw him into the pit and shut it and

3:50

sealed it over him so that he might

3:52

not deceive the nations any longer

3:54

until the thousand years were ended. After

3:57

that, he must be released for a little while,

3:59

then I saw thrones and seated on

4:01

them were those to whom the authority to

4:03

judge was committed, and I saw

4:05

the souls of those who had been beheaded for

4:07

the testimony of Jesus and for the

4:09

Word of God and those who had not worshiped

4:12

the beast or its image and had not received its

4:14

mark on their foreheads or their hands. They

4:16

came to life and reigned with Christ for

4:19

a thousand years. The rest

4:21

of the dead did not come to life until

4:24

the thousand years were ended. This

4:26

is the first resurrection. Blessed

4:28

and holy is the one who shares in the first

4:30

resurrection over such

4:32

the second death has no power, but

4:35

they will be priests of God and of Christ,

4:37

and they will reign with him for,

4:39

let's say it all together, a thousand years.

4:41

A thousand years.

4:43

So what chapter again in the Book of

4:45

Revelation is that?

4:46

So that's chapter 20, verses 1

4:48

to 6.

4:49

All right. Well, I think that's pretty clear.

4:50

It's very close to the end. Yeah.

4:53

That's okay. That's

4:57

so clear. I mean, that that's exactly

4:59

what I was taught when I was growing up, is that,

5:01

you know, the millennium hadn't

5:04

happened yet, but it was Jesus was going to

5:06

come down and he was

5:08

going to, like, burn up all the bad people.

5:11

And then Satan would go

5:13

into like into his

5:15

own little prison for a thousand years

5:17

and all the good people would get resurrected

5:20

and like hang out with Jesus. And

5:22

then after the thousand years, Satan would get

5:26

come back for a while and then

5:28

we'd beat him for good this

5:30

time. And then all the

5:33

other people that weren't as good as

5:35

us, they would get resurrected then.

5:38

But they wouldn't have as much fun.

5:40

No, they would not. They would be

5:42

bummed out for the thousand years when

5:44

we were all hanging out together. So

5:47

I think that the Book of Revelation

5:51

just showed how true that was. Boom.

5:54

There you go. So what you have just

5:56

described is pre millennial

5:58

ism. That is the term that is used to describe

6:00

it. Right. So this is

6:02

the idea that before the

6:04

whole earth is restored pre,

6:07

there will be the 1000 years

6:09

millennial ism of Jesus

6:12

and his special group of saints

6:14

hanging out on the earth after

6:16

all the bad guys have been dealt with. That's the pre

6:18

millennial version. So

6:21

that is the most literal reading

6:23

of this passage. Obviously, the

6:26

post millennial term, a term

6:29

post millennial ism is kind

6:31

of an attempt to deal

6:33

with this by bringing it down

6:36

into the plain of ordinary

6:38

historical developments. So post

6:40

millennial ism is more like the idea

6:42

that once human beings have finally

6:44

gotten their act together, established

6:47

the Kingdom of God on Earth through their diligent,

6:49

faithful efforts and a thousand

6:51

years of peace and progress take place,

6:53

then Christ will come

6:56

and say, "Good job, guys, you

6:58

know, now, now we're ready to, you

7:00

know, put this thing on steroids and go for

7:02

the big time." But it's a thousand years,

7:04

basically, of human effort at bringing

7:06

about the peaceable kingdom.

7:09

This is generally like a lot of

7:12

work.

7:13

Yeah, I don't think we've achieved. I

7:15

don't think we've achieved even one year

7:18

of such.

7:18

Well, of course not. Of course not. So

7:21

this one is not believed in usually such

7:23

a literalist way. However,

7:26

it is sort of I would say it's implicit

7:29

and has been very much interwoven

7:32

with especially since the Enlightenment

7:34

ideas about modernity and progress

7:37

and moral improvement over

7:39

time. Whenever you hear someone

7:41

easily dismissed that back then, they were bad

7:43

and they were ignorant and they didn't know better. But now we

7:45

do. And now we're doing better. That is drawing

7:48

on what is functionally the post millennial

7:50

ism of a lot of progressive

7:52

or enlightenment type thinking that

7:54

we can do it. We just need

7:57

to do it. We get our acts together and

7:59

we can bring the kingdom. And that animated

8:01

a lot of like social gospel

8:04

thinking and and other

8:06

reform movements that often were

8:08

in explicit tension with

8:10

this more like cataclysmic approach

8:13

of pre millennial ism.

8:15

Yeah.

8:16

Then we have a millennial ism,

8:18

and this is the shocking idea

8:21

that Revelation is not literal.

8:23

It's not a code and it's not an allegory,

8:26

but it is a revelation of

8:28

Jesus Christ and must

8:30

be understood theologically

8:33

through its native language of symbolism,

8:35

which is not a code and is not an allegory.

8:37

But it's a different mode of

8:39

literature or understanding

8:42

that because it is so unnatural

8:45

to us, it is by definition unnatural.

8:48

People have a hard time with it and they want

8:50

to make it purely literalistic

8:53

or they turn it into some

8:55

sort of backup for their own, their

8:58

own ambitions and ideologies

9:00

for this worldly in, you know, post

9:02

millennial ism, it would be progress.

9:04

So a millennial ism says,

9:07

yes, something significant theological

9:10

is going on here, but we are not meant

9:12

to read it as a literal

9:14

prediction or a literal

9:16

mandate for what we are supposed to

9:18

be doing. But all

9:20

the times and including the end time

9:22

are in God's hands. God has told us

9:24

very little about what it's going to look like.

9:26

Jesus himself said, I don't even

9:28

know when the end is coming. So if even the

9:30

Son of God doesn't know, how could anyone else possibly

9:33

know? So this is a deliberately,

9:35

let's call it agnostic position

9:37

that surely some and

9:40

some way God will fulfill his

9:42

promise to restore the whole earth. But

9:44

we don't know how. We don't know when. And it is not

9:46

our job to even speculate, much less

9:48

declare to the world at large when

9:50

and how it's going to happen. Guess

9:53

which side I'm on?

9:54

Yes. Yeah. Me too.

9:59

So. So, like, locate

10:01

for me. This series

10:04

of books and movies that

10:06

were popular. Don't know, ten, 15 years ago.

10:08

The Left Behind series. I assume

10:11

that's the pre millennial.

10:14

Yeah, well, okay, that's true. But

10:16

there's a long prehistory to pre

10:18

millennial ism. And I think actually,

10:21

even though this will take us really far back, I think

10:23

this will be helpful because of course,

10:25

as you know, both Old and New Testaments have apocalyptic

10:28

language and literature within them,

10:30

even like the gospels, like, you know, Mark 13,

10:32

Jesus' prediction of the end times. That's apocalyptic

10:35

within the gospel, which otherwise is not

10:37

explicitly, you know, it's more

10:39

history, you know, biography, even

10:42

if a theological one. But even

10:44

as early as one of the church fathers,

10:46

Irenaeus, who lived around the year 200

10:48

so pretty early in post

10:51

biblical Christian literature

10:54

he's already looking at Revelation

10:56

20 and trying to make sense of it. And

10:58

he has a little fun, does a little light numerology,

11:01

trying to figure out, you know, you know,

11:03

he's basically saying.

11:05

I heard you could do that. I

11:07

heard that on the Internet, if you like, type

11:09

in... If you'd Google it,

11:11

it'll tell you that if you count

11:13

this many characters, da da da, then

11:16

you can know. That's what I heard.

11:18

Right? Well, and of course, people figured

11:20

out very early in human

11:23

development that numbers are cool and you can do

11:25

weird stuff with it and you can like and you can

11:27

have letters and numbers match up like

11:29

that has been done. The problem is,

11:31

if you read it as a code or if you read it as

11:33

a symbol and Revelation is

11:35

full of numbers, but they're symbolic numbers.

11:37

They're not code numbers and they're not math numbers,

11:39

they're symbol numbers. So anyway,

11:41

Irenaeus plays around, has some fun.

11:43

But then after trying it out, he concludes

11:46

and this this is really important. Okay. This is from the

11:48

year 200. He says

11:50

"It is more certain and

11:53

less hazardous to await

11:55

the fulfillment of the prophecy

11:57

than to be making surmises and

11:59

casting about for any names that

12:01

may present themselves in

12:03

as much as many names can

12:05

be found possessing the number mentioned.

12:08

And the same question will, after

12:10

all, remain unsolved."

12:12

So 1800 years ago,

12:14

one of our greatest church fathers got

12:17

it. We will never know This is something

12:19

again in Jesus' hands. Jesus is

12:21

the one who will answer these questions

12:23

and make these prophecies

12:25

true in whatever way he intends to

12:27

make them true. Alas,

12:30

that has not stopped Christians from

12:32

having indulging not in light numerology,

12:34

but deep and dark numerology

12:37

and getting themselves very panicked. Like

12:39

when the year 1000 rolled around, everyone was

12:41

like, Oh my gosh, it's been a thousand years since Jesus,

12:43

we're all going to die. And then time kept ticking

12:45

along and they're like, Oh, maybe it wasn't

12:48

that millennium. And

12:50

ever since.

12:51

We did it again in 2000.

12:53

Yeah, that happened in 2000.

12:55

Yeah. But actually there's a Wikipedia

12:57

page of all the predictions of the end of the

12:59

world just from Christians through

13:02

history. And it is, it's hilarious

13:04

reading because there have been so many and

13:06

they've all been wrong. There's

13:08

been a 100% failure rate

13:10

in predicting the end, which evidently never

13:12

stopped someone from trying again because this time

13:14

I'm going to be right. But yeah,

13:17

so and like the reformers, they

13:19

weren't like the Lutheran reformers

13:21

were not super bad about it, but they

13:23

saw massive upheaval

13:25

and they were kind of worried sometimes.

13:28

Pietists got into it for

13:30

a while. I would say most errors

13:33

of the magisterial reformation and

13:35

Catholics are Orthodox have basically said,

13:37

you know what, we're not going to do this anymore. This

13:39

is a bad idea. But unfortunately,

13:42

that didn't eliminate it. It just passed into

13:45

a different holding tank. And

13:47

so the sort of the forefather

13:49

of modern, especially pre

13:51

millennial ist thinking, is this guy

13:54

named John Nelson

13:56

Darby. He's the founder of the Plymouth

13:59

Brethren, British

14:01

kind of break off Evangelical group

14:03

in the 19th century and he was

14:05

super duper into prediction

14:07

predicting the end. And then a lot of

14:09

his ideas were taken up into the Scofield

14:12

Reference Bible, which was one of the most

14:14

widespread Bibles, especially in the US.

14:16

It's from early 20th century, sometime

14:18

I think maybe close to the outbreak of the First

14:21

World War, which you can understand, brought on a lot

14:23

of apocalyptic panic again. But

14:25

it's basically a Bible that

14:27

like tells you like goes through

14:29

and picks out all the prophecies and how they have

14:31

been are going to be fulfilled. And that

14:33

is really what, like I have to say,

14:35

use this bad word, but like infected

14:38

the American Christian imagination.

14:40

And there's something I

14:42

think there's a lot of mix up in just

14:44

the whole American project of like

14:47

such immense promise and

14:49

such immense darkness and like, trying

14:51

to sort out, you know,

14:53

are we are we going the right way or the wrong way?

14:56

And how do we know and who's on what side?

14:58

And, you know, you know,

15:00

the greatest freedoms in the world

15:02

ever sitting on top of, you know,

15:05

mass death of Native Americans,

15:07

enslavement of African Americans,

15:09

you know, amazing

15:11

industrial progress, but then loss

15:13

of land and, you

15:15

know, being

15:17

a place that everybody wants to come to and sees as

15:20

a beacon of hope. So you get such conflicting

15:22

signals within the American experiment

15:25

that if you want a clean answer,

15:27

are we getting better or are we getting worse?

15:29

You know, if you think we're getting better, you're

15:32

a post millennialist . If you think we're getting worse, you're

15:34

pre millennialist. If you think it's probably

15:36

not either or, it's probably both. And

15:39

maybe we do not within ourselves have

15:41

the key to history. Then you choose the right

15:43

answer which is you're an millennialist .

15:48

How many more times could I say this before we're done?

15:54

Okay. Okay, go. Go ahead. Well,

15:56

I was just saying. So.

15:57

So. So the left behind thing, right? Like.

16:00

Yeah, I know that's not as popular

16:02

now, but, you

16:04

know, ten, 15 years ago, there were lots of

16:06

people and and

16:09

it was, you know, in popular literature.

16:11

And, you know, the the the airline

16:14

pilot who gets raptured. Right.

16:16

We haven't used that word yet.

16:17

Oh, yeah. The rapture. I forgot about the rapture.

16:20

You know, taken away. And then the airplane

16:22

crashes. Whatever. It's it's

16:26

I like how you classify

16:29

it so that it it reflects

16:31

our own conflicting feelings

16:34

about our society. Right? Are

16:36

we getting better or are we getting worse? And

16:40

there are so many times where

16:42

it seems like things are going

16:44

to hell in a handbasket. Right.

16:47

And so this kind

16:49

of belief could, I

16:51

don't hold this belief myself. Like

16:53

you said, I think a millennial ism

16:55

is not, you know, not

16:58

being a millennial ist

17:00

is the right choice.

17:03

But I can see the attraction. That's where

17:05

wanted to go. Right? That if,

17:08

you know, if everything looks terrible

17:10

at any particular point in history, well,

17:13

maybe it's a sign of the end times and

17:15

Jesus is going to come back soon. Right.

17:18

And and so, you know,

17:20

so you're looking through the Book

17:22

of Revelation, which is a weird book

17:24

in many ways.

17:26

It is a weird book

17:27

Find some some

17:30

hope. Um, and and

17:32

it it is those times, especially when

17:34

the church is persecuted or when it

17:36

seems like the end of the world is near. I

17:38

think it's those times when when the Book of Revelation

17:41

is comes more to prominence

17:44

and not in not in bad ways

17:46

like we're talking about what the Left

17:48

Behind series or whatever, but but

17:50

also in good ways just to to

17:52

give, to

17:54

remember and to to be reminded

17:57

that God is God, right.

18:00

And that God has.

18:05

God. God has God's

18:07

will will be done in the end.

18:09

That is the restoration

18:11

of all that is good

18:13

and and that God will reign

18:16

at the end of days. Right. Even if it

18:18

doesn't seem that way now.

18:21

Yeah, I think we should. We should come back maybe

18:23

as we finish up about what revelation the

18:25

Book of Revelation is for. But

18:27

to try to give now a slightly more

18:29

charitable gloss on this. Like

18:31

you were saying, why are people attracted to

18:33

the to this kind of left behind or pre

18:36

millennial or also sometimes called dispensationist

18:38

thinking? I think one

18:40

thing is that as soon as you realize

18:42

there is history, you can't help but

18:44

asking where you are in it and

18:46

how do you interpret it? Is history

18:49

one damn thing after another? Is

18:51

there a narrative thread? Are things

18:53

inevitable or are they contingent?

18:55

Are we close to the end or are we still close

18:57

to the beginning? You can't. Once

18:59

you know there's history, you have to ask those questions.

19:02

But it's almost impossible to get a

19:04

very satisfying answer to any of

19:06

them. There's also a question of

19:08

whether the origin is greater

19:10

or the goal is greater. So one

19:12

kind of thinking says it was perfect in Eden

19:14

and everything has been declined since

19:16

and the goal is to get back to Eden. But

19:19

another way of looking at saying Eden

19:21

was a launching point that was never complete

19:23

in itself. And yes, things went terribly

19:25

awry when Adam and Eve ate the apple

19:27

and were expelled for the garden. But nevertheless,

19:30

the the the goal was always going

19:32

to be greater than the origin. And the

19:34

church fathers also had this idea of the

19:36

felix culpa the the happy faults

19:39

of sin because it

19:41

opened the doorway to even greater than

19:43

the origin itself could have contained, which

19:45

was the incarnation and resurrection

19:47

of Jesus Christ. So I think that's

19:49

one thing, is that nobody gets out

19:51

of historical thinking and

19:54

we might not like this method

19:56

of historical thinking, but I have a huge

19:58

problem with a lot of secular forms of historical

20:00

thinking, too. So it's not you know, I

20:03

think we're more irritated by the Left Behind

20:05

version because it's like inside our camp, you

20:07

know, we want fellow Christians to do

20:09

better. But it's not like the

20:11

problem doesn't exist on the outside.

20:14

I think also in the specific case of

20:16

the Left Behind books, I think they were expressing

20:19

a very literal feeling of being left

20:21

behind. And, you know, since those

20:23

books have come out, we have seen a kind of gutting

20:26

of the working class, more and

20:28

more of the middle class Americans

20:30

who feel that their nation does

20:33

not represent them or speak for them is hostile

20:35

to their values. So, you know, this

20:37

was a way of giving people who

20:39

felt really left behind, neglected,

20:42

uncared , unvalued the deplorables.

20:44

You know, it gave them a feeling of

20:46

importance and value. Now,

20:48

I would say revelation itself,

20:51

when it addresses murdered people

20:53

actually at every move, blocks

20:56

revenge fantasies. So

20:58

the idea that, you know, these bad people

21:00

are going to be in car and airplane crashes

21:02

because they weren't good enough to be raptured, fundamentally

21:06

misunderstands the message of revelation.

21:08

But if we talk just about human emotion

21:11

and social movements, I think that's

21:13

one of the reasons why this is so powerful.

21:15

It is a way like if you if you have

21:17

spiritual insight into the way reality

21:20

really works, the way, God's real plan.

21:22

If you're on the right side of history, then

21:24

it gives you a power in your state of powerlessness,

21:27

you know, And I think it's hard for

21:29

Americans now to hear that powerless

21:32

people are not necessarily

21:34

virtuous people. You know,

21:37

they should not be they

21:39

should be invited into

21:41

power and responsibility and not denied

21:43

privileges and opportunities. But powerless

21:46

people don't just become good because they have no power.

21:48

They can be resentful, they can be vengeful.

21:50

They can use their weakness as

21:53

a tool of moral control. And

21:55

I think that's one version. The

21:57

Left Behind series is tapping into that

21:59

very ugly human characteristic

22:02

as well. And that's another reason to

22:04

oppose it. But unless we address

22:06

also the root cause of the feelings

22:08

and find some other ways

22:10

of of inviting them,

22:14

inviting us, if we are in that category

22:16

into a different way of relating to the

22:18

the injustices

22:21

and power imbalances, then,

22:23

you know, I can see why that's an attractive

22:25

option.

22:26

So okay, so if, if, if Revelation

22:30

is not about

22:33

the like preparing

22:35

us for the literal millennium

22:37

and if we're also not

22:40

ushering in the millennium by

22:42

our acts of good works and justice and

22:44

mercy. Then

22:47

what even is the point of

22:49

the Book of Revelation?

22:53

You know, I'll ask

22:53

To confuse.

23:00

Well, it's it's to give hope I

23:02

think. I mean in all of its weirdness

23:04

and all of its symbolism and

23:08

you know, oblique references

23:10

like, you know, Babylon is

23:12

Rome. And, you know, it's

23:15

it's to say, in the end,

23:18

the blood that is shed is the blood of the lamb.

23:21

And it is the the crucified

23:23

and risen lamb Jesus Christ who

23:25

is to be worshiped and glorified.

23:29

And and that in the end,

23:31

God wins. Right.

23:34

The beast doesn't win. Satan doesn't

23:36

win. The antichrist doesn't

23:38

win. Right. No matter how

23:40

bad things look. And remember

23:42

John of Patmos, John is

23:44

writing this exiled to

23:46

an island. You

23:48

know, things aren't cheery

23:51

for him, right? No

23:53

matter the what it looks like

23:55

on the ground, God wins in

23:58

the end. And not

24:02

the, you know, God of the Greeks and Romans

24:04

or the God of Empire, but

24:06

the God that we know most fully in

24:08

Jesus Christ. Right? The the

24:10

one who gave himself in

24:13

love for the sake of the world.

24:15

This the self-giving sacrificial

24:20

Lamb of God who

24:22

gives himself for the sake of the world. So

24:25

in all its weirdness, I think

24:29

I think the Book of Revelation in the end

24:31

is a book about hope.

24:33

Yeah, I think it's it's written

24:36

of and for martyrs

24:38

and not people who think they're martyrs

24:40

or who vainly wish

24:42

to be martyrs, but people who are

24:44

actually facing their own

24:46

bloodshed from a

24:48

power that doesn't care about shedding blood

24:50

is just happy to get rid of them and I think

24:52

on some level, revelation is really

24:54

meant for those people above all,

24:56

and we can do our best from positions

24:59

of scholarship and security to

25:01

understand it in the most responsible

25:03

and theologically insightful way possible.

25:06

But I think in some respect,

25:08

Revelation most of revelation is

25:10

not for us. However, to immediately

25:12

caveat that at the beginning are

25:14

the letters to the seven churches, and

25:16

they range from faithful churches

25:19

to lukewarm churches to

25:21

nearly apostate churches. And

25:23

in that respect, all all

25:25

churches are called to read

25:27

this book and recenter themselves on

25:29

the theology of the ultimate martyr. Who is

25:31

Jesus Christ of course, the lamb who was slain before

25:34

the foundation of the world, as Revelation

25:36

says. And then Revelation ends

25:38

after all the enemies have been dealt with and

25:40

all the suffering is behind. I mean, the

25:43

very last bit is the vision

25:45

of of God and humanity

25:47

fully reconciled through Christ,

25:49

dwelling together in a transformed

25:52

heaven and earth. And in that respect,

25:54

even if you lead

25:56

a pretty decent life with relatively

25:59

low suffering, you're still going to die.

26:01

You're still going to see other people around

26:03

you die. That is the ultimate apocalypse

26:06

that awaits everybody. And in that

26:08

respect, you know, at least the last

26:10

chapter of Revelation is also for

26:12

you. And it's the last chapter of the Bible. And it

26:14

is the the the goal towards

26:16

which we're heading, which I would say does exceed

26:19

the origin. This full integration

26:22

in a loving fellowship of God

26:24

with all of his people.

26:26

The new heaven and the new earth, where God will

26:28

wipe the tears from all faces

26:30

and death will be swallowed

26:32

up forever. Well.

26:37

Thank you, Sarah. Thank

26:39

you for explaining all the

26:41

millennialists . You haven't

26:43

explained the Millennials, but the Millennials.

26:46

Well, there's lots of books on that one, too.

26:49

There are a lot of books on Millennials, too. Yeah.

26:51

Thank you so much. You, as usual,

26:55

have just explained things very clearly

26:57

and and articulately.

27:00

And we really appreciate your

27:02

depth, sharing your depth of knowledge

27:04

with us and

27:06

and your, I think, insightful

27:09

critiques and insights

27:11

about about Western society.

27:14

So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank

27:17

you to our listeners again for listening

27:19

to this episode of the Enter the Bible podcast.

27:21

You can get high quality courses, commentaries,

27:24

resources, videos and other reflections

27:26

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27:29

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27:38

you soon. Bye.