This essay has undergone a large change in scope and focus. Originally it was published with a different viewpoint as A Word to Preterists. Later, my intention was to simply update the page with content and grammatical changes. Unrelated to this purpose I decided to access some written and video content on the Internet concerning current Preterists to see what they emphasize and where they are located. What I discovered was very disturbing. It caused me to change my direction and emphasis regarding the update and to deal rather with the subject of Futurists critiquing Preterism and to examine a few spokesmen who hold themselves out as enlightened critics. Two of the spokesmen will be especially evaluated, not only concerning their interpretations of Scripture, but also concerning their characters. This last examination is due to their judgments against those they call Preterists or Full-preterists. Their judgments demand a response. The nature of this essay is expository. It’s not lengthy because I want it to be so. It is lengthy because it has to be so.
What I write about on these pages I have read or viewed first hand, although some of the things related by the protagonists are secondhand as they themselves make the claims against their perceived or real opponents without any real response from their opponents. Some of those criticisms might be accurate, but without the ones charged actually responding, they serve as secondhand information. I’ll point out when the judgments are based on secondhand information as necessary.
To Futurists: Before I begin, I will give you some of my personal information and where I stand. I hope you will continue to read and not disregard what I will say because you do not believe my standing is of the truth. You might close this essay and move on, but I hope you will continue to read because of three very important issues that I will cover. First, I will respond to the critics in appropriate thoroughness. After that, I will take up two essential issues for all who confess the Lord Jesus; the love of God against the works of the flesh.
I give you a challenge to keep reading. I hope you will accept it. This challenge is actually the way that I prove all things in my journey. When you believe you are standing in the truth, you should, you really must be able to withstand all proper criticism against your position. In fact, I welcome and seek out the opposite position from the one I have or that I have arrived at after much seeking. If I correctly stand, I cannot be moved. If I incorrectly stand, I need to be shaken off of my false platform. Otherwise, I am not really serving God. This must be an objective approach to be real. Otherwise, it is simply an exercise in self or group-think approval. So, please read the whole essay. I develop it as I progress through it.
I will describe myself so you can know where I “fit in” in the situation at hand. Frankly and happily, I do not conveniently fit in, although many will reject my statement and automatically assign me to the Preterist camp, or, I should say in keeping with the labels, the Full-preterist camp. Be that as it may, I reject the labels Preterist or Full-preterist. I have never supported them. To a certain degree, I know what people mean who use them, but I try to avoid them. They carry man-made baggage and cause ongoing division and judgment, whether intentionally or not. They do this the very same way as other well-known labels. For example, many would identify me as a Protestant because I believe the disciples of Jesus are saved, that is, justified from sin through faith alone in Jesus by God’s grace alone. As such, I reject any and all positions which require one deed or more deeds on the part of believers to co-operate in salvation, that is, to be justified from sin before God. Protestantism is full of man-made baggage, grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit of God. Therefore, I avoid the label. For another example, many would identify me as a Calvinist because I believe all disciples of Jesus were predestined by God before He created the universe to be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus. Calvinism in its various forms is loaded with interpretive and functional error that is not of God. Accordingly, I avoid the label. And finally, many would identify me as a Preterist or Full-preterist because I believe that God’s Kingdom has come in the return of His Son in glory to put an end to the domain of sin and establish God’s rule in eternal life. Perhaps Futurists who don’t like the labels Protestants and/or Calvinists are able to understand my distinctions and emphasis. However, when it comes to the fulfillment of prophecy and God’s corresponding promises, for many such understanding and allowance is often off the table. They will not yield here. Why is this? It is because – and only because – the protagonists who hold to the belief that the fulfillment of last days and second coming prophecy and God’s related promises are still in the future possess their belief as essential to salvation, or, at least essential to truly pleasing God and are convinced that their interpretation is, therefore, unassailable and required in the sight of God. Both of those positions are false. They are indefensible in the sight of God. Their advocates cannot and will not hear that. They are as entrenched in their interpretations as the old Ptolemaic astronomers were in theirs that the earth was the center of the universe. To oppose them is to pay the price. To oppose the former geocentric planetary system was to pay the price back then. Futurists are absolutely convinced that the interpretive beliefs that they possess were and are those taught by Jesus and His immediate disciples. Furthermore, they are convinced to a fatal degree when they make repetitive judgments against the people of God, judgments that are grounded in works of the flesh. But I will consider those very serious iniquities later. A true examination will discover the belief system of futurism to be in serious error. Jesus and His disciples taught the exact opposite of Futurist’s teachings. How do I describe myself concerning the teachings of Jesus and His disciples? As one who believes in the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God.
Before I begin with actual considerations of some positions, I assert that Partial-preterists are really Futurists. They properly interpret the cataclysmic signs of the end of the Old Covenant as the Immortal language that it is, but they work violence on the text by arbitrarily separating the unified teaching of Jesus in order to keep their Futurism intact. In this regard they are no different from Futurists. To their credit they understand the spiritual language of cosmic ruin and have not spiritualized it, or, more precisely, they have not modified it like their Futurist brethren have done. To their discredit, they have taken up the banner of Futurism in jettisoning the honor and glory of God and their inheritance in Jesus. They share these following traits* with Futurists as bulwarks of its support: *They super-abound in classic begging the question, that is, they assume as true what they endeavor to prove as true. *They super-abound in setting up strawman arguments in order to successfully knock them down. *They super-abound in repetitively hammering their interpretations of the Scriptures as being the very Scriptures themselves. *They super-abound in quoting as the final authorities approved “scholars” or church-leaders who hold to the shared interpretive model of Futurism. For them, Futurism, in whatever form, is the scholarship. And finally, and this is the hardened shell of the entire system, *they super-abound in holding erroneous interpretations of Scripture as unassailable and unanswerable proof-texts that establish Futurism. They refuse to hear any real challenge to their interpretive model. Like the Jews regarding the Messiah, they are convinced that they are hearing God regarding His Kingdom.
Also, I am not defending Partial-preterists in what they correctly understand or Full-preterists in what they understand. Regarding the first group, their proper understanding is limited and does not need defending. Regarding the latter group, I really do not know the full extent of what they teach because my exposure to their teachings has been limited. I’ll address this as I move forward.
Many things can be said, and have been said to correct the entrenched errors of Futurism. In this essay I will only address the statements of the critics that I referred to earlier.
After such a long introduction, I will begin with the video content and refer to the written content as this method was taken up by the critics.
I began by watching a video by three young men who made outlandish statements laced with slander and mockery. The statement was repeatedly made that Max King was the author and originator of Full-preterism.
(NOTE: At this point I will use the words “Full-preterism”, “Partial-preterism”, and “Preterism” (and related words) as they are understood and/or used by the critics. As stated earlier, I don’t use those terms. I believe in the fulfillment of all prophecy and related promises. In short, I believe in the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God. Since I am giving a critique of the critics, I will use Kingdom of God or Kingdom when referring to God’s rule today as properly understood. Keep in mind that I do not know the extent of the man-made baggage that attaches or may attach to the groups of people labeled by the critics. Hence, I’m not defending them. I am defending God’s truth! I am defending the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God!)
Max King did not originate the Kingdom! It is incredible to even have to say that. The statement by the three shows their entrenched stubbornness or their gross ignorance about the Scriptures’ teaching concerning the manifestation of the Kingdom. Even if Max King was correct in his presentation, he was born 1,860 years after the coming of the Kingdom. Jesus and His disciples taught the imminence of the Kingdom in the first century, the fulfillment of which the first century believers would fully know and experience. As secondhand information, I understand that King had very poor and extreme interpretations about the Kingdom. I also understanding that he descended into Universalism. That was a fatal stance which disqualified him from salvation in Jesus. However, his end was matched by his beginning. Apparently, King’s false teachings did not remove him from holding to the position that water baptism, pre or post AD 70, was/is essential to eternal life. His unique salvation by works doctrine is a very strange bed-fellow with his brand of Universalism. Blatant self-contradictions are not new to extremism. The host said that everyone who embraces the Kingdom learned it from King. What utter non-sense and outright slander! I for one did not! I know that I am not alone. My exposure to Max King has, thankfully, been very, very limited. God’s enlightened sons existed far in advance than the days of Max King, and we will exist into the future without any significant awareness or any awareness at all of that false and confused teacher.
The three went on to say and imply that if one believes in God’s Kingdom, he will end up in atheism! They established their position by referring to a person who held to some view of “Full-preterism” and then disavowed God because it “didn’t work”. They took that man as an enlightened instructor who taught that “Preterists” are trying to “save the savior”. Again, what utter non-sense! Do atheists only spring from people who believe in the strawman teachings that the three propagate? Further, they stated that Don Preston is the leader of “Full-preterism” today. Really? I set my seal that God is true concerning the fulfillment of His Kingdom nearly 40 years ago, well before I heard the name Don Preston. I read his name from time to time when I was studying and researching the Bible and that he held to “Preterism”. That fact was simply a fact to me. I did not research him or pursue him or his teachings in any way. Only very recently did I find his website on the Internet and read his FAQ statements. In some of them he presents serious errors in the way he handles certain Scripture passages. He misunderstands the subjects he tries to answer and only gives deluded answers. Needless to say, I moved on. The result of the video presentation of the three is that it is grounded in their false statements, errors, slanders, and other works of the flesh! To them I ask, Are you believers? If so, put off the unfruitful deeds of darkness. The fruit of your trees is bad. With Jesus, it’s good or bad, not a mix!
Next, many Futurists posted videos that had the answer or the answers that proved Futurism and put an end to “Full-preterism”. Those amounted to nothing other than sensational YouTube headlines! Why is that? Because the answers they give are nothing other than classic begging the question. You can hammer your question-begging theory a million times, but that fact does not establish it in any way as true! Rather, such a mentality only serves to inoculate the protagonists and their devotees against receiving the truth! One such teacher, Steve Gregg repetitively hammered his preference for using the secondary meaning of the grammatical written construction mello in the infinitive, which means “certain to happen”, as the deterministic meaning for the many places in the New Covenant Scriptures where it means “about to happen”; all the while admitting that his use was the secondary usage. What self-exposure! All instances of mello in the infinitive are determined by the very messages themselves in which they appear! The vast number of occurrences show that the construction means, “on the verge of happening – at the point of happening”. The words of Jesus and His disciples must be taken at face value as meant! Futurists spiritualize away the meanings of the words with the result that Jesus was teaching beyond His hearers or at least implying that they would not really and fully participate in the consummation of all things within their lifetime, as He made explicitly clear to them that they would. That interpretation of the teaching of Jesus is fraught with many problems of great magnitude. Gregg’s ad nauseam pressing the theory of futurism is another of the very many instances wherein Futurists begin and end in fallacy. The effect is that their “victory” in teaching amounts to preaching to the choir. One must depart from the clear teaching of Jesus and His disciples in order to embrace Futurism. While grammatical constructions are useful and serve to reinforce the reality of the messages conveyed, it is the very meanings of the teachings themselves that the first disciples, and we by extension, heard (and hear) that carry the emphasis. This is made abundantly clear by the fact that nowhere does a New Covenant author say something like, “look at the grammatical constructions brethren”. If they had done so, and assuming that their readers would have been grammatically proficient, it would have only served to bolster the very meanings of the statements that they wrote! Such a mind-set was alien to first century readers. The meanings of the words were and are conveyed in the very messages themselves!
Now I come to the two “teachers” I mentioned earlier. It is generally not my way to name individuals, especially to point them out as destructive and embodying in themselves what they hypocritically point out in others. However, their positions and outcomes require my response, both for God’s glory and the strengthening of the brethren. Before I come to the charge of judgment, I will examine their beliefs and interpretations. The two men are Joel Richardson and Sam Frost. I will start with Mr. Frost as he seems to be the darling spokesmen for those who seek to undo the Kingdom of God on earth and cast it forward into an ever evasive future. This is because he is well-known as one who was a leader in the field of “Full-preterism theology” and then renounced his position as erroneous. Sometimes I will refer to both men together because Mr. Frost was in agreement with the interviewer, Mr. Richardson, in many things.
What I relate below is not necessarily in chronological order per the videos.
It is very clear that Sam Frost never understood, never comprehended the truth about the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God. I’ll say it again. He never comprehended the Kingdom of God! Such is revealed in his very statements about why he renounced his position and in his interpretations of the Scriptures that he is convinced refute consummation fulfillment. I was first made aware of Sam Frost a few months ago when I searched the Internet about fulfillment believers as previously stated. I was simultaneously made aware he renounced his position at the same time that I was first made aware that he wrote a book supporting his former views. The first thing I found as his bulwark proof of the “error of his former ways” was in an archive and it is simply his fundamental misunderstanding of the function of the tree(s) of eternal life. He stated and believes that eating of the tree of life, which is for the healing of nations, proves futurism. He said that fact boils it all down to "Preterism", as he understands it, being completely false. Again, this was a salient point that he stressed in the quote.
This interpretation completely misunderstands the experience of the Kingdom of God. I will say here that this particular characteristic of misunderstanding is common among all who discount and gainsay the fulfillment of all things. It is also hypocritical because it does not give account for the reality stated as such - “the tree of life is for the healing of nations” - applied in Futurism. The reality of, the function of the tree of life is the same, whether one is a Futurist or believes the Kingdom is fulfilled. If it denies the present fulfillment of the Kingdom, it also denies the position of Futurism. The tree of life is not exclusive to Futurism. Nor does it overthrow the fulfillment of the Kingdom, as Frost maintains. It is an ever present reality, per se. Healing for the nations today in our present glory is the function of the tree(s) of life. If Futurists hear the Scripture, the tree of life will function in the future in their belief system. If they do not hear, the tree of life will not function in their belief system because it will have fulfilled its purpose. It will not be for the healing of nations. The Scripture contradicts Frost. What is the function of the tree(s) of life? It is synonymous with perpetually waiting upon Jahveh, mounting up with eagles’ wings in fellowship with Him. It is synonymous with always fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter (the consummator) of faith. This is what it means to be healed by its leaves. I wrote an essay about the state of sinless glory where we are like the angels of God. It is entitled “Confusion of states of glory – the undoing of many”. Read that for the clarification. That state awaits us when we die. It is not experienced by the people of God abiding in the glorious footstool of God now. A main trait of Futurism is that it believes the third heaven of God equals the fulfillment of the eternal heaven and earth, that is, that it equals the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God on earth now. Being a teacher, Frost should have known these things. He has been blown about by the confusion and craftiness of flesh (which he propagates) precisely because he is of the wrong mindset and belief system.
Next, and this is another salient point, Frost believes that his interpretation of the resurrection of the dead, which he shares with all Futurists, is the inerrant truth of God about the subject. He believes that his interpretation of the resurrection of the dead is ironclad and is beyond error. Of course, he does not acknowledge that it is his and his fellow Futurist’s interpretation. To him, his interpretation IS the word of God. Such is the constantly recurring mindset of errant and entrenched doctrines of men. What is Frost’s doctrine? He believes in the future physical, somatic rising from the graves of all flesh to be judged by God at the Great White Throne; that all bodies that were physically buried will be physically resurrected, although of another existence. And not only so, he also believes that to deny the future physical bodily resurrection of God's people is to deny Christianity! That belief is fundamentally and fatally flawed. Such a position misunderstands the Scriptures and Paul, the champion of explicating the teaching of the resurrection body. Clearly, Sam Frost, the one-time “Full-preterist” never comprehended Paul who made abundantly clear the teaching of the resurrection of the dead! Frost and his fellow Futurists have spiritualized the Scriptural teaching about the resurrection. Their spiritualization is of an odd character. Rather than remaking the teaching of Paul into a hyper-spiritual doctrine they have gone the opposite way and rendered it neo-secular, neo-mundane, somatic, linear, and always future. Or to use Paul’s terms, they made it conform to the corruptible, the weak, the dishonorable, and the natural-earthy realm of existence. To them it is unthinkable to draw this conclusion. But to hear Paul is to conclude exactly that. He made a clear distinction in the nature of the sown body and the nature of the reaped body, the resurrection body. He went to great length to explain to the Corinthians the kind of body they would experience in the resurrection, that it would be incorruptible, powerful, honorable, and spiritual in the life-giving Spirit of the second Adam, who is Christ! Nothing implies they did not understand him. Frost has failed to do so. He believes that the ongoing transformation of the physical body in the hope of its future glorification is the only reality of process issuing into the future resurrection of the physical body for all of God's people. He thinks that particular victory will only happen when the future second coming of Jesus will occur. He holds all of this as unassailable Biblical doctrine. He believes that to deny this interpretation is to deny the resurrection of the dead and to deny Christianity! This is classic begging the question with its strawman arguments. It is also blasphemy as it defames God and defrauds and casts out His sons who believe Him. Joel Richardson is in hardy agreement with these positions. The exact opposite of Frost’s position is the truth. We now, as the believers did then, glorify God in and through our redeemed bodies – the body of the resurrection. Ours is not some kind of spiritualized body, which is the false charge arising from Futurists. Our glorified bodies are those which you now see. They don’t observably glow. They don’t walk through walls. They are not unrecognizable. They are spiritual! They are powerful! They are immortal! They are incorruptible! How is this? It is because, and only because were are living members of the body of Christ! It is because we now see Jesus as He is in His manifested glory! All of this is a matter of reality in the presence of God. It is the manifestation of His eternal purpose fulfilled. It concerns our present position of existence within the tabernacle of God. None of this has been perceived by Futurism. All of these truths are grounded in spiritual reality! Futurism is of the unspiritual natural-immature mind. It cannot, it will not submit to the fullness of God because it is not able to do so, in the very nature of the case! By inheritance we have been given life! With our bodies of honor, glory, and power we now serve, magnify and worship God in His Holy Spirit! We now glorify God in our body corporately, and bodies individually, which belong(s) to the Lord. Therefore, we are to present our bodies to God in all reverence, strength, modesty, and worship according to His commands. We are not to present our bodies as displaying all manner of worldly and immodest secular expression! Instead, in our redeemed and spiritual bodies we offer sacrifices of praise in purity and cleanness as God’s kingdom of priests and His sons of light in Christ our realized glory and great High Priest and the Light of Jahveh! This is the reality brothers and sisters. We are the manifested sons of God! Ours is the realm of God, the spiritual realm, the immortal realm, the realm of God’s purposes in Christ Jesus fulfilled - not the illusionary realm of a hoped for delusion invented by the Patristic Churches which does not hear Jesus! Ours is the Kingdom of Jahveh and Christ Jesus!
Furthermore, Frost and Futurists believe in the church mythology that the resurrection body of glory is immune from grief, struggles, sorrow, and things like these. Have they not understood that our God Jesus was acquainted with grief and sorrows and was anointed with joy above His companions? Have they not heard, they have not comprehended, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” He was I Am then. He is I Am now! Are they greater than the Lord Jesus Christ? Jesus knew those experiences, yet had NO sins. This is the plan and purpose of God for us, the body and fullness of Christ. This is the goal of maturity reached: that is, the spiritual manhood of Christ bestowed upon His people. We are no more the child. We are now always the man! His full-knowledge, this mature-knowledge in the Son of God has been bestowed upon us in God’s eternal purpose in Christ! Does Christ sin? Absolutely not! In Him we do not sin! In Him we abide and abound! This reality in Him is our inheritance from the Father! When we abide in Him we abide in God. When we drift because of mundane and worldly distractions, alas, we sin and must recover. It is the only way in Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We abide upon the mountain, where His blood of sprinkling is! This is the reality of being healed in the Kingdom of God by eating of the trees of eternal life which are given precisely for the healing of nations. Like medicinal trees on earth, the spiritual tree of life in God’s presence heals correctively and sustainably. These revealed realities are not in the illusionary and mundane mindset of Futurists. Their preconceived convictions compel them to make gross misjudgments against God and His people. They should know better, but they don’t! The natural mind cannot understand the things of the Spirit! Frost has shown us his natural mind.
Before leaving the subject of the resurrection, there is one issue which needs to be isolated because it is a false and malicious rallying place for modern Futurists. This favorite “proof-text” of their position requires an answer to this question: Do they believe this because they are that out of touch with how to interpret the Scriptures or are they that malicious against the brethren leading to slander them and seeking to divide them with their patently false interpretation? Frost and a young man who interviewed him on YouTube, and Frost and Richardson quote Paul’s statement to Timothy about avoiding ungodliness and decay and apply it to everyone who believes in “Full-preterism” or “Preterism”! What did Paul say? He pointed out two men that Timothy was aware of, Hymenaeus and Philetus. He immediately described their teaching. He said, “Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have gone astray from the truth saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and they upset the faith of some.” Paul wrote to Timothy in the early 60s, which was less than a decade BEFORE the resurrection occurred! Frost, Richardson, the young man, and Futurists who agree with them “conveniently overlook” that salient fact! Clearly, they do not know the reality of what Paul said to Timothy just before he took up the correction against Hymenaeus and Philetus: “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” The young man kept referring to Frost as Dr. Frost, which title Frost received. He went to Bible college and got at least one degree, presumably in some branch of theology. One would think that Frost understood the basics of hermeneutics. Is this gross ignorance or simply blatant prejudice on the “Doctor’s” part?
This underscores the fact that we who believe that God’s Kingdom has come do not in any sense or any way deny the resurrection. No, absolutely we do not deny it. Rather, we absolutely affirm it! We really and fully live because it has been fulfilled! What we deny is the false interpretation of the resurrection that all Futurists affirm. That interpretation does not hear Jesus and His disciples! Rather, it hears and affirms the false interpretations of the Patristic Fathers who first arose in the second century and evolved church doctrine in all succeeding centuries. Side note: it is ludicrous to hear Catholics and Orthodox followers declare that they are returning to and establishing the original teachings of Jesus and His disciples. The nascent errors of the churches began in the second century, which is their starting point. Those groups are too late. Origins began with Jesus Christ when He appeared the first time to save people from their sins and returned within one generation (real and not spiritualized) to judge people in their sins. To illustrate that we are dealing with interpretation, and always have been, and not the very subjects themselves, I will take Joel Richardson’s belief about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the supernatural gifts of the Spirit that operated in the last days as a potent example. He declares he is a Charismatic. Assuming that he holds to the classic interpretation of Charismatics, he might say about people who do not hold that position that they are denying what the Bible teaches or denying the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the supernatural gifts. They would properly say that they are not, but that they deny the Charismatic interpretation of Joel Richardson. It is exactly the same concerning the resurrection of the dead. Rather than we who believe God’s Kingdom has come being those who deny the resurrection, I affirm with power we are the ones who believe and confess the resurrection. Frost, Richardson, and Futurists are the ones who do not understand the resurrection. I will not go as far as Frost and Richardson have done to say that Futurists deny the resurrection. I do affirm strongly that they have completely misunderstood it and turned it into a fleshly-earthen doctrine of a spiritualized nature.
The resurrection is a grand and vast subject as it deals with epochs in the plan of God. It is not future, linear, and hyper-mundane as Futurism holds forth. I have written extensively about the various aspects of the resurrection. Go to those links on this website.
Next, Frost sees a related issue as rendering the death-blow to “Full-preterism” and forever establishing the “truth” of Futurism. It is one of his major platforms of standing, which he believes, like the trees of life, positively establish the standing of Futurism. He makes the claim that “Full-preterists” cannot answer this issue and it was a chief pivot point in causing him to renounce his former ways. What is it? What is it that cannot be answered by us who believe God’s Kingdom has come? It is this teaching of Jesus recorded by John and Frost’s interpretation of it: “Now this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” This quote accounts for two of the four times that John records Jesus making this statement in that setting. The setting in which Jesus said this was when He told the Jews that He was the Bread of Life that came down from heaven. It is all straightforward enough. There is no mystery in what Jesus said. Frost has followed Futurism in interpreting “the last day” as “the last day of time”, a concept invented by the Church and found nowhere in the Scriptures! The one place where they think they can stand is based on a flawed translation found in the King James Version of Revelation 10:6 where the angel swears by Jahveh that there will be delay no longer. The King James Version carried the day in the churches for a long time. It helped form and support the interpretive model of Church leaders and teachers. Held up to proper evaluation, it is found lacking and inferior to translations which came after it. The KJV translates the word chronos as time. Even the New King James Version translators departed from their predecessors and properly translated the word as delay. Frost believes that since Jesus was referring to “the last day of time”, then “Full-preterism” has to be wrong because time is always filling up the number of the believers. Frost, therefore, blasts “Full-preterism” has having an innate “flaw” in its emphasis on 70AD. I will take up the 70AD issue later. Frost believes that 70AD fulfillment cannot be reconciled with the end of time raising up by Jesus. Frost is correct if his interpretation is true. However, Frost’s interpretation is flatly false! Remove his fallacious interpretation and he is incorrect. Frost’s position that Jesus was teaching about the end of time is purely begging the question, maintained in propping up Futurism. The fallacy cannot prove itself. What did Jesus teach? The phrase “the last day” is unique to John. He used it seven times in his narrative. I’ve already considered four of those in Jesus’ Bread from heaven teaching. Five times it refers to the last day issuing into the resurrection. One time it refers to the last day issuing in the judgment. And in the one remaining usage it refers to the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, which is its only usage that does not apply directly to the manifestation of the Kingdom of God with its immediate consequences. It is also the only time that the identifier is used with the last day. The question still remains about the other instances. What does the last day apply to? What does it signify? Just like the application of the end of the age, which I will consider a little later, the context supplies the answer. Without a doubt, it applies to the final day of the functioning existence of the Law and administration of Israel. This will clearly be seen later when I examine the very close synonymous term, “the last days”. John used the singular expression the last day. His contemporary writers used the plural expression, the last days. Interpreting those usages will completely shine light on John’s usage. Jesus taught the truth! He taught that by His power and love He would keep all believers who the Father had given to Him until the end of first covenant! Martha stated so much to Jesus about her brother Lazarus. Conversely, Frost teaches the lie! He has removed the last day from John’s message and made it the message of Futurism. Frost has built his house of interpretation on sand.
Regarding “the blessed hope” of Futurism: This is a primary phrase for Futurists and another one of their countless co-opted Scriptures. It has been extracted from its original setting and meaning and put in service of Futurism’s scheme. It is also another one of their many begging the question proof texts. Joel Richardson became noticeably upset, in fact angered, when he stated that he would have to remain in his sometimes painful condition if the teachings of the fulfilled Kingdom, as he understands them, require his submission. He perceives those teachings as taking away “the blessed hope” as he understands that hope and, accordingly, invests his well-being into it. That hope is where he hopes to find his remedy and answers. Mr. Frost agreed with Mr. Richardson. Neither person understands the riches of the Kingdom of God. Both of these false teachers launch their critiques against God’s manifested Kingdom and His people from their fallacious platforms. Paul wrote to Titus, not to Joel or Sam, and used the phrase “the blessed hope”, which is its only occurrence in the New Covenant Scriptures. He said, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all lawlessness, and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good works.” This entire exhortation was enjoined by Paul upon Titus as an anchor and ground of holiness for all of the stated classes of people who were under the direct ministry of Titus. It was not a statement of timeless proverbs as Futurists treat it, one which always applies to everyone in the near or distant future. Titus was told, “These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you. Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to slander no one, to be peaceable, considerate, demonstrating all gentleness to all men.” Titus was told to press God’s will upon the prior stated groups of people under his care. He was told not to allow any person of those groups to set him aside. This phrase, “the blessed hope” is an extracted haven for Futurists. They have put their hopes and yearnings into the concept. Like the Jews regarding the Messiah, all of their problems will be solved when their anticipated “blessed hope” arrives one day. And, like those Jews regarding the Messiah, their concepts of what the Kingdom is stands in their way! The young man on YouTube who interviewed Frost expressed the same large measure of future victory and happiness in that particular “blessed hope”. The problem with this entrenched and immovable mindset is that it completely removes the message of the author from its setting. This is the intractable way of Futurism. It constantly works havoc on the Scriptures, spiritualizing everything into a time-locked prophetic-promise perpetuity! The way to interpreted the Word is constantly blown apart in the service of its pre-conceived interpretive model. In this false model, if the authors of the New Covenant Scriptures were writing to the believers directly under their care and instructions, it was only in a reduced and partially measured way because they were, and are really speaking over their heads and beyond them to believers not yet born! What gross spiritualization of the messages in service of a false hope and prolonged fantasy! What utter nonsense!
“The blessed hope” Paul referred to has been fulfilled in the appearing of the glory of the Lord Jesus. All realization of that hope has been given to God’s sons in Christ Jesus! Our blessed state is to abide in faith and love and always fix our eyes upon and walk with Jesus; to wait upon Jahveh, to mount up with wings of eagles, to run and not grow weary, to walk and not faint. Christ, the focus and goal of the blessed hope of glory, termed such by Paul in middle of the last decade of the Old Covenant administration, is now Christ the realized glory of God in us! Emmanuel is fulfilled! The name of the temple is Jahveh is Here! He has anointed the holy of holies! He has brought in the eternal righteousness of God! To defer the blessed hope into the future is to fundamentally fail to properly interpret the letter to Titus and is built on church fantasy and deluded and deferred hope, which is no eternal hope at all. Futurist will depart this life, always yearning for the hope that they already possess if they are the sons of God. The righteous live by faith in the Son of God! Weak and small faith attains very little. What it does guarantee is the ongoing state of being under the chastisement of God for refusal to believe in His faithfulness, love, and promises fulfilled. His provision has been set at naught.
Frost and Richardson make the slanderous charge that people who believe Jesus has already fully established God’s Kingdom are Gnostics! Do these men even know what Gnosticism was in the first century or is today in its current form? Obviously, they do not! Paul and John, who both taught the imminence of the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God within 40 years of the life of Jesus, went to great lengths to combat Gnosticism. This is another subject that is over the heads of those two slanderers at best. At worst, the false charge is another weapon in their arsenal of hatred and division. Gnosticism has nothing to do with the Presence of Jahveh with us in Jesus! The charge is blasphemous! It is an abomination if the sight of God!
Richardson finds a lot of fault with believers interpreting the Age or end of the Age as the Age of The Law or the Jewish dispensation or the Old Testament or like identifiers. He makes the claim that the Bible does not say what the age is that’s under view and “Full-preterists” are in error who define age by any of the descriptions named above. He accuses them as adding to the Bible what is not there in order to promote their doctrine. And yet, he does the very same thing with this phrase and with the phrase, “the last days”! What a blatant hypocrite! He condemns in others what he allows in himself. I will return to “the last days” issue soon. Continuing with Richardson’s charge about the end of the Age and related statements, he is simply flatly wrong! After rendering his correction against those of us who believe God, Richardson also offers his bad interpretation of the age in which he thinks he and everyone else lives. He declares that Christians are in “the present evil age”. This phrase appears once and it is in the writings of Paul. It is one of two places in the New Testament where an explicit identifier is united to “age”. The other place is in his open letter to Asian assemblies that bears the title “To the Ephesians”. There he used the phrase “according to the age of this world” to describe the former lives of the believers he was writing to. That phrase is synonymous with “the present evil age”. I plan to write an expository essay on The Age – The Ages in the future. Suffice it to say now that the phrase “the age” is stated just less than 100 times in the New Covenant Scriptures. The word is used slightly less than 125 times. That is because it appears more than once in some statements. For example, “This age and the coming age.” Except for the two instances just mentioned, the Holy Spirit requires us to do exactly what Richardson condemns. God expects His people by His Spirit to understand the meaning and application of “the age” and/or “the ages” by the very statements in which they are made! The messages themselves declare the meanings! Now, what about Richardson’s interpretation? In his letter to the Galatian assemblies, written in approximately the year 49, Paul used the phrase in his opening salutation about the mission of Jesus regarding the people to whom He was sent. He wrote, “Who (Jesus) gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” The year 49 was 21 years before that present evil age ended. As though living with Paul, Richardson anachronistically places himself, and everyone else, as living within that past evil age. It is just like placing oneself within the prophecies of the prophets who prophesied of the coming of the Messiah, an anachronistic characteristic of post-Jesus and modern Jews. Richardson’s declaration amounts to error grounded in bad interpretation of Paul.
Richardson practices what he condemns about “the age” in his repeated use of “the last days”. He believes Christians are in the last days. Frost is in hearty agreement with his mode of interpretation. Nowhere do the Scriptures attach an explicit identifier to the phrase “the last days”. Again, God expects His people in His Spirit to understand what is being said in the very context of the messages themselves. This is a Divine expectation that Futurists utterly and perpetually fail at achieving. The messages are very clear! The last days were the last days of the Old Covenant and all that it entailed. They were the last days in which Jesus, His apostles, and everyone else who were of their generation lived. The phrase itself, “last days” is used four times in the New Covenant Scriptures, five times if you count 2nd Peter. There are synonymous phases with the last days. They are, “the last time”, “the last times”, “the latter times”, and the more restricted, “the last hour”. This last phrase was used because John wrote his largest letter at the very end of the sixth decade. All of these synonymous phrases with the last days speak of the very same time and are also defined by the messages which contain them. Futurism has imposed its theological belief system onto these phrases and so has transformed them to say something altogether different from what the Scriptures say. What does the context in which they appear say? I will list several of the statements which make clear beyond any doubt what the last days applied to. First, at the fulfillment of the Feast of Pentecost recorded by Luke, some of the people of Israel thought the disciples where drunk because they were speaking in tongues and glorifying God. Peter took his stand among the people and declared that the ancient prophecy of Joel was at that point fulfilled. Luke wrote, “But Peter, taking his stand with the eleven, raised his voice and declared to them, “Men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give heed to my words. For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is the third hour of the day; but this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
"And it shall be in the last days,’ God says,
That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind;
And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
And your young men shall see visions,
And your old men shall dream dreams;
Even on My male slaves and female slaves,
I will in those days pour out My Spirit
And they shall prophesy.
And I will put wonders in the sky above
And signs on the earth below,
Blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke.
The sun will be turned into darkness
And the moon into blood,
Before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.
And it will be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
Those were the days of Peter, the other 11 apostles, and all who were present at the fulfillment of the Day (of Feast) of Pentecost in Jerusalem fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus. Those were the last days. Richardson, Frost, and Futurists were not there. They have co-opted the last days of the Old Covenant and remade them into something altogether different in service of their hyper-theology. According to Peter quoting Joel, the last days fulfillment of the Feast of Pentecost with its supernatural signs occurred before the coming of the great and awesome day of Jahveh. The year of the fulfillment of the Feast of Pentecost was approximately 33.
The last days are just that, they depict a certain period of time. Indeed, they are a much shorter period of time when compared with the larger period of time that they append to. Before continuing with other scriptural statements that define what the last days were appended to, this “we are in the last days” interpretation is one of the many violations of Scripture that Futurism must offer in order to make its stand. Futurists do exactly what they falsely accuse “Preterists” of doing. They spiritualize away the meanings of words. We who believe the Kingdom has arrived believe the words of Scripture spiritually, as the Holy Spirit expects. Our life is in the Holy Spirit of Jesus! To believe the words are spiritual and to spiritualize the words are a universe apart. Other scriptural words that Futurists spiritualize are “near”, which in their model really means “far”; “at hand”, which in their model really means “remote”; “soon”, which in their model really means “distant”, and the list could continue. As inherit in their spiritualization they teach that the words have their interpretive meanings because God intended it that way to keep His people in a holy expectant life-style. This is again nothing other than purely begging the question. God’s very words of instruction and command keep His people in a holy life-style. He employed no hyper-scheme with words to do that. Jesus meant and means exactly what He said and expected His people to understand and believe. First century believers understood that! We should understand that!
To continue, the author of the essay to the Hebrews wrote to Jewish believers who were considering leaving Jesus and returning to Moses as God’s acceptable way of salvation. Hebrews contrasts the inferior and quickly disappearing ways of Moses and the Law with the superior and manifesting ways of Jesus, Who is the Law. The entire essay carries and develops that theme. The author opened the essay with this statement: “God, having spoken long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son.” Hebrews defines the last days, termed these last days, as revealed and grounded in the ministry of Jesus. Jesus’ ministry, His spoken words to Israel, occurred in the early part of the third decade of the first century. Hebrews used a synonymous phrase that highlights and reflects those last days. Later on, the author said, “but now once in the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” The author declared that Jesus’ death upon the cross occurred in the consummation of the ages. The prior ages (plural) were fulfilled in the sacrificial death of Jesus. His death revealed the fulfillment of the foregoing ages just as His life in Israel revealed the last days. The question remains, what were the ages and what were the last days referred to? We must use the Scriptures for our teacher and our guide. We must not rely on interpretations and doctrines of men when they conflict with the Scriptures. The Scriptures show that there were two periods in which God covenanted with mankind before the ministry of Jesus. They were the period of the covenant with the Patriarchs, beginning with Abraham and the period of the covenant of the Law, beginning with Moses. “A particular period or course of time” is one of the definitions of the Greek word “age”. Accordingly, those were the two ages of which the New Covenant Scriptures speak. All of this is developed by Paul in his letter to the Galatians. The Law came 430 years after the promise to Abraham. The Law was the administration of God wherein He developed His eternal purposes through His Levitical Law, His temple, His judges, His priests, His kings, and His prophets. It became the taskmaster to lead all men to Christ. As such, it bears the emphasis of the two ages of God covenanting with mankind before Christ. The Law of Moses ended through the ministry, atoning death, resurrection, heavenly rule, and return of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the last days spoken of refer to the administration of the Law or, as the author of Hebrews often termed it, the first covenant. To be precise, only Paul used the phrase, “the old covenant” and he used it one time when writing to the Corinthians. All four places where the last days are named in the New Covenant Scriptures refer to the period that began with the ministry of Jesus and ended in the termination of the Law of Moses as God’s administration with mankind through Israel. They are not the last days of time or the church age or human existence or any other designation that Futurism applies them to. All such question begging applications are unsustainable from the Scriptures and are purely doctrines of men put forth to uphold a belief system. From the bedrock of the Scriptures, Futurism is the unsustainable fantasy!
Next, I will cover some other issues that Futurists maintain prove their case and at the same time expose God’s Kingdom now present with His people as being false.
When responding to the teaching that God’s Kingdom has come, they say, “Is this all there is?” This question is not a sincere one, it is put forth in a negative, pejorative and reproving way. The very fact that they even ask this question, even as a query of exposure, shows that they are light-years away from understanding the Kingdom of God! Their Futuristic model has bankrupted them regarding understanding the spiritual nature of the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus did the very same thing, although his question was genuinely sincere. In short, to ask the question is not to comprehend to Kingdom of Jahveh and Christ! They are misguided without understanding.
70AD! – 70AD! – 70AD! This is the pounded and misguided refrain. What is all this about 70AD? I ask this question in a realistically measured way because I understand what occurred in 70AD. I understand what happened. Obviously, the Futurist detractors do not. To them the whole issue stands or falls on their faulty understanding of 70AD! 70AD! 70AD! The major events referred to that occurred at Christ’s coming were monumental in the same way that the other co-incident major events were monumental. Indeed, they were all epochal! – this is another issue never comprehended by Richardson, Frost, and Futurists. The destruction of God’s temple was one of many events, with their corresponding signs, that the old order and all that it entailed was over, it was finished and, as Hebrews declared, ready to disappear. All of those monumental events happened at the same time, at the consummation of that age. They were all epochal! At the same time, at the consummation of the age the Old Covenant with its temple of worship in Jerusalem was over. Satan, sin, and death were thrown into the lake of fire, where the Beast and the False Prophet had previously been thrown! The evil age of the world and sin and darkness was finished! Principalities and Powers of darkness and wickedness were terminated! The flesh, corruption, and weakness were ended! The night was over, the Day arrived. Jesus began His manifested reign as Jahveh’s revealed Son in the full-knowledge of God! Eternal, immortal, incorruptible, and imperishable life grounded in and fulfilled in God’s Son appeared! God created everything new! His tabernacle fully dwelt with His sons! His kingdom of priests was manifested! His sons of light were revealed! All of this occurred through and in Jesus – Jahveh’s Alpha and Omega, His First and Last, His Beginning and End, His All in all! 70AD! 70AD! 70AD! Yes an epochal event occurred in the destruction of the temple and it was one of many epochal events that declared and still declares the Glory of God in the people then, and in us now by way of our inheritance fully given! Futurism is dull to all of this. They only see the end of stone and mortar. They await the Glory and the Power of Jahveh that is here today in the Lord Jesus Christ!
In keeping with the 70AD mindset, another issue that reveals the weak-minded and flesh dominated lack of comprehension of the futuristic gainsayers is that they always refer to the present heaven and earth as “new” in handling the subject. This constant repetition shows their fundamental lack of understanding. Frost presents himself as someone who was a “leader” in “Preterism” and then left it because he saw its errors! What I’ve covered already shows Frost did not understand the Kingdom of God on earth that he claimed to represent. The constantly repeated phrase, “the new heavens and the new earth” exposes those who portray God’s administration that way as not understanding what they criticize. It was new when it was thus identified in Jesus’ Revelation, which was written over 2000 years ago. It is new no longer. It is the settled state of the administration of God’s Kingdom. To walk in fellowship with God in the glories of His Kingdom is to understand its established realm. We do not call “new” what has been our way of life for over two millennia; life lived out in the generations of The Age. To continue to call God’s reign new is to completely misunderstand His reign and our relationship with Him within it. How should we consider the phrase now? We now abide in God’s eternal heaven and earth in the manifestation of His Kingdom. America was called a new nation when it was founded 250 years ago. It is new no longer. The same fact applies to the Kingdom of Jahveh and Christ. Futurism’s terminology reveals its flawed understanding and model.
Frost prefers the literal and material destruction of the physical cosmos and earth and its literal and material remaking over the immortal language of cosmic and terrestrial cataclysm used by God when He judged nations. This is the way of Futurism in general. It is inherent in the scheme of the renewal of everything. Everything is reduced to the material, the wooden, and the mundane, although spiritualized. In his particular case, Frost acknowledges the spiritual application of such events to the physical judgment of nations as recorded history in the Bible and properly interpreted by others as such. He simply rejects it, as does Futurism. Nothing more really can be said here. When someone acknowledges the proper way to interpret and then chooses interpretations based upon group approval, his mind is clearly closed. It is like seeing salvation by grace alone, but preferring justification before God by faith and work(s), It is like seeing Jahveh’s predestination but preferring mankind’s autonomy (free will) as God’s way of salvation. Such a mind is made up! Such a mind will not be corrected!
The next to last issue I will consider is the insistent and detrimental commitment to the historic creeds of the churches. Before I begin, I need to make clear that I am not taking issue with the question of the deity of the Son of God and the Spirit of God which are addressed in the creeds. I’ve stated before in my essay entitled, The one and only assembly council that I find it incredible that the Patristic Church found it necessary to debate those issues. Such was the long arm of heresy which had infiltrated the Patristic Churches. Be that as it may, I am dealing here with two other issues of concern which were addressed by the Church Councils and maintained in their creeds.
Frost, Richardson, and the church masses in general consider the creeds as inviolate. These creeds, especially the ecumenical group, are treated by Catholics, Orthodox, and a number of Protestants as the unassailable assurance of safety and security with God, while they support and endorse them as litmus tests of true believers. While there is debate among these groups as to which creeds are completely true and demand full submission, they are held in common to a significant degree. In all practicality, they view the creeds as Scripture although they try to distance themselves from that actual position. The outcome, however, is the same. According to them, to not submit to the creeds is to not submit to Christianity. It is here in the very creedal commitments, that the tables are turned on the committed accusers. They are judged by God by their very own standards!
The earliest creeds began their rise and development in approximately the early to mid third century, well after the deaths of the apostles of Jesus and their first century contemporaries. In the following statement I will underscore the condemnation leveled by Frost, Richardson, and other Futurists against “Full-preterists”. Then I will underscore the real and obvious problem, which condemns the condemners. If it’s said one time, it’s said a thousand times, “The Christian Creeds declare that Jesus IS (presently) seated at the right hand of God and WILL return (IN THE FUTURE) to judge the nations.” And, “The creeds show that these facts are part and parcel with Christianity. Therefore, to depart from these facts is to be a heretic, that is, such departure shows that the person IS NOT a Christian.” Yes, I agree, that is what the creeds say. That is how they must be interpreted. It is just here that Futurists find support and vindication in their judgments against the “heretics”. This particular standing, this judgment against “Full-preterists” as heretics, is spiritually lethal to those who hold it. (I will address this later, as I’ve indicated above.) However, to their eternal undoing, they do not deal with the other bulwark issue established by the creeds. All of the creeds address, either directly in word or indirectly in practice the issue, the fact as so established, that water baptism is essential to salvation, to justification before God. That is, Christians MUST be water baptized in order to be Christians. There is NO option here. The Tertullian exception was unusual. It addressed martyrdom before the martyred person was able to be water baptized, according to his/her intention to be baptized. It was put forth by Tertullian at the beginning of the third century. What am I saying? The protagonists hold that anyone who believes the Kingdom of God has come in fullness is a heretic because he has departed from the teaching of the Bible as made known and endorsed by the Church Councils and their creeds. Unless they all believe that one MUST be water baptized in order to the saved, they have done THE VERY SAME THING! They have departed from the Church Councils and their creeds. If they agree with them, then they are lost! They are not believers in Jesus! They are not Christians! Paul made this issue very clear, without ambiguity and beyond any doubt. If they believe that water baptism is essential, that is, is indispensable to justification before God, then, according to Paul, they are under moral obligation to keep all of the commandments of God as long as they live without failure – an impossible task and the reason why God sent His Son into the world to save sinners! According to Paul, they have cut themselves off from Christ! If they say that they do not subscribe to water baptism for salvation, but hold to the other bulwark doctrine under consideration, that the coming of Jesus to judge and establish God’s Kingdom is in the future, then they are cherry-picking the Church Councils and their creeds according to their inclinations. They are classic hypocrites! They are guilty of what they accuse “Full-preterists” of doing; not submitting to the Church Councils and their creeds. Furthermore, this cherry-picking character is already obvious in their partial submission approach to the creeds. The first Ecumenical Creed, the Nicene Creed has 20 Canons – 20 Laws appended to it as necessary for obedience among all who were in the Christian Church. These were not “freedom” type issues, to to kept or not kept according to conscience. These were all mandatory according to their specific applications. How many of those today who insist that the creeds must be followed follow the 20 Canons? I will venture to say none do. In fact, I will also venture to say that the vast majority of creed proponents don’t even know that these 20 absurd canons exist. This is another instance of ignorant, if not willing hypocrisy.
Now for the last issue of concern. It is the moral issue regarding God’s love and holiness.
This is essential: Individuals have departed from the faith who are devoid of the love of God and operate in the works of the flesh. Remember these words from John, Paul, and Jesus:
John: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love." And, "And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has in us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." And, "If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also."
Paul: "Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor catamites, nor male-bedders, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God." And, "Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Jesus said, “Beware of the false prophets (my note: here you can substitute false teachers and not do violence to the message), who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits.” He also said to His contemporaries, “The Queen of the South will rise up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.” I emphasize, “to hear the wisdom of Solomon”. Solomon made this monumental statement which applies full force to Richardson and Frost, who was in league with him in his judgments.
“There are six things which Jahveh hates,
Even seven which are an abomination to Him:
Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked thoughts,
Feet that hasten to run to evil,
A false witness who breathes out lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers.”
Like the Jews before them, these two men think that they are doing God a service in exposing and condemning God’s people. And like the Jews before them, they are in the most serious error!
My judgment on these judges is this: They are cut off from Christ – they have cut themselves off – because of one of the two positions or both. First, if it applies to them regarding works, according to the creeds they submit to the universal demand that water baptism operates synergistically for salvation. Second, they walk in, they practice these works of the flesh: enmities, division, blasphemy (that is, verbal abuse), slander, and strife. There is still hope for them, even if they choose to build with wood, hay, and straw upon the foundation, Jesus. They must put off the damning works of the flesh. Otherwise, they will not enter into the Kingdom of God!