The Lake of Fire and the New Creation...Day 23

A few months before I had swallowed the red pill of preterism I had begun editing and producing a teaching program called "Reality," with Pastor Britt Merrick. For those surfers of you out there you might recognize his name. He is the son of Al Merrick, founder of Channel Island surfboards. Britt is the pastor and founder of a church located in Carpinteria California by the same name as his radio program...Reality. I thought that this was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Not only did I get to listen to some great teaching...But I was also getting paid to do it. 8)

Before Britt began his own church he was a youth pastor at a Calvary Chapel Santa Barbara. And so of course this meant that his teaching style pretty much lined up with Calvary Chapels distinctives. Which was great...Until I embraced a fulfilled view of eschatology. 8( And I must admit that it was kind of hard at first to sit and listen to hour after hour of teaching that I no longer agreed with. However...One of the unforeseen benefits of this was that it actually helped reinforce the fulfilled view that I was quickly learning about. Funny thing about this whole thing is that he spends a lot of time in his teaching proclaiming the typical pre-millenial futurist point of view. Matter of fact the most popular of his teachings was his end-times series. And here I was...A preterist...Producing one of the most popular programs airing on Calvary Chapel owned radio stations around the world. Helping promote a view that I felt was misleading. Eventually this would be one of the deciding factors as to my leaving the station.

O.k. So it had been about three weeks now since I had come to understand a fulfilled view of eschatology. I had just finished making my way through the New Testament, line upon line, verse by verse and I had some more questions. The one that I chose to address first was found in Revelation 22. It was the freshest of all seeing as how I had just finished reading the book. From the futurist perspective, Revelation 22 describes the conditions of a time in the future after Jesus returns, after the great white throne judgment takes place and after sin and death are destroyed and creation is remade anew. Basically a new creation in which righteousness dwells and sin and death has been eradicated. Yet I couldn't reconcile this with what I was seeing in Revelation 22.

Revelation 22:1-3 And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him.

And so I thought...Wait a minute. If the curse had been reversed and sin had been dealt with why was there still any need for "healing of the nations?"

The next problem I encountered was just a few verses later. Verses 14-15.

Revelation 22:14-15 Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie.

If this passage is to be understood quite literally we then have a major problem. You see...This passage is describing the New Jerusalem that is part of the new creation that takes place after the judgment in which sin, death and the devil have been eradicated and yet there are still, "dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie," outside the gates of the New Jerusalem.

And so I approached one of the pastors on staff that was teaching in our school of ministry with this conundrum of sorts. I first asked him about these leaves that were for the healing of the nations found in Revelation 22:2. He said, "I think it is better understood as they are for continual health rather than actual healing...You see, at this point they are in the new creation. There is no more sin therefore it can't be understood in a wooden literal sense."

I then asked him who these people were that are outside the city. His answer was that this was a picture of the eternal state of those that had died the second death. That is, those that had not accepted Christ before the last day. He pointed me back just one chapter to Revelation 21:8 "But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."

I said, "Wait a minute...If Revelation 22 is painting a picture of the eternal state beyond the great white throne judgment and the second death then how is it these people are still alive outside the gates the New Jerusalem?"

And he said, "Well you see...If being inside the New Jerusalem is the destination of those that believed then outside the gates would be the abode of those that didn't believe...The lake of fire."

And then I responded with Revelation 22:14 "Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city."

And then I said, "And who is outside the gates?"

He smiled and said, "Well...We need to be careful to not press the analogy too far." Or something to that effect. He smiled, turned and briskly walked away. Sigh...<---Long drawn out sigh. 8) It was passages like these that couldn't be satisfactorily answered within a futurist framework of interpretation that would eventually drive the final nail in the coffin of the "Left Behind" theology that I had been holding to so tightly.

Calvary Chapel Preterist...Day 21

And so it had at this point been about a week since I had come across the fulfilled view of Bible prophecy. And what an emotional week it had been. Especially because of the context in which I had discovered it. Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa was not the place to find an objective point of view on something outside of what they held as one of their distinctives. And so one morning as I was driving home from school something led me to stop by one off my old haunts...Parkcrest Christian Church in Long Beach and see my friend Mike Goldsworthy. At that time, if I remember correctly he was still the pastor of the high school ministry and he had this really cool little office in the back. Well...Come to think, the whole office facility at Parkcrest is pretty cool. You see...As the church was making plans to expand about 10 years ago a mortuary that was on the same piece of property was about to put the property up for sale but first offered it to Parkcrest. Needless to say they snatched it up like a 3rd baseman does a line drive. Not only did it have a ton of office space but it also had a sanctuary/chapel right out on the main thoroughfare compared to the main church building that was set back quite a ways. If you are ever in the Long Beach area I'd recommend stopping by and checking out one of their weekend services. <---Shameless plug. 8)

Anyhow...Back to my visit with Mike Goldsworthy. I'm not sure why I thought to stop in and see him but I would find out very quickly that God must have had his hand in this chance meeting. We snaked our way back through the offices and conference room to an outside courtyard and then back into another door through an office setting to Mike's office. A small office with a small forest's worth books covering one wall and a door to the outside world on the other. Oh...And of course a large chair, or maybe it was a small love seat for guests. After a few minutes of small talk I asked him about where he stands on the issue of eschatology. With a smile on his face and a little bit of trepidation in his voice he answered, "something along the lines of a the partial preterist camp." I was kind of surprised but more relieved than anything.

Knowing me, I probably spent most of the time talking that morning about everything that had happened over the last week or so. I was just so incredibly happy to find someone that was not hostile to my unfortunate, difficult and precarious situation. But...I had been awake all night and early into that morning and what would now soon be afternoon and I really needed some sleep. As I was leaving he recommended a book to me that he said really helped him out with where he was at. It was "The Last Days According to Jesus." by R.C. Sproul.

And so the following day I stopped by Lighthouse Christian Store and picked up a copy. I kept it with me and read a few pages here and there when I had the time. It's not a long book. Something like 250 pages or so. Definitely a worthwhile read especially if the popular views taught on T.V. and in a lot of churches today has left you scratching your head. Sproul does an incredibly good job demonstrating quite reasonably how the olivet discourse, in Matthew 24 was fulfilled just as Jesus had said...Before that generation(40 years) would pass away.

As well at this same time I had concluded that the best thing to do was to go word for word through the New Testament with a fine tooth comb and see what I could dig up now that this paradigm shift had taken place. And so I didn't just open up my Bible and start reading. I took my Bible on mp3 and listened to it while following through line upon line with a set of colored pencils ready to mark things up. This project took about two weeks to tackle. Now my Bible had all of the timing statements related to the end times/last days hi-lighted in green. I'd say that this was a watershed moment...But it was more like sitting under a waterfall for two weeks. There was no turning back.

How would I reconcile this with being a Calvary Chapel pastor? Could I still be a Calvary Chapel pastor and teach a preterist view of eschatology? How would I reconcile this with working for Chuck Smith?

These are just a few of the questions that would make what remained of the last semester of The School of Ministry the most difficult 3 months of my life. 8(

Soon, Near and At Hand...Day 20

As I continued to research further into this method of interpretation that was new to me the more I realized that this was nothing new at all. The more time I spent researching the fulfilled view of eschatology, the more I realized that I had quite simply missed the boat regarding this view as I had been studying the end times over the last couple of years. I had heard the term preterism before and simply laughed it off as absurd but now, somehow, something had changed. Why was it that this understanding that was new to me was now ringing through my head as true? Maybe it was because of many many hours of study that left me frustrated. Maybe it was because of someone like Hank Hanegraaff, whom I respected highly for his work on the radio, that had accepted some form of preterism that helped me see past my own desires of upholding the futurist view that I had been holding to so tightly. Then again, maybe it was something as simple as God's will and His timing. Either way a new season in my life had begun and my life would never be the same.

And so with each and every passing morning that I was working at the radio station I began to look deeper and further into the preterist view of eschatology. Although I must say...I almost felt kind of funny doing this research while working at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. The reason why is because of some recent changes that they had made to their network at the church. You see...CCCM is a huge church. And when you add up all of the hundreds of different people that work there in all of the different ministries that have access to their computer network and the internet it was pretty clear why they had just recently added Websense to the network. Websense is a security and monitoring software that tracks where everyone that has permission to be on the network has been. That and block certain things that most churches don't want their staff looking at.

And so here I was full of excitement for this new path that I was traveling down and wanting to search every corner of the world wide web, scooping up every morsel of knowledge on the subject that I could find...And now they would be keeping track of every step I took. Doh!!! 8)

At first I was a little apprehensive. I didn't want them to see that I was spending so much time looking at websites about something that was so fundamentally different from what Calvary Chapel taught. Now mind you...I wasn't by any means letting this research keep me from doing my job. If you remember being on-air leaves you with a lot of spare time. Although I must say...my studies for the school of ministry did take a slight turn for the worse. Not to much though. I had already gotten so far ahead on so much of my work that I was able to coast for a while.

And so after a few days I got over my Websense related apprehension. And I was off doing tons of research on the topic of preterism and of course like most people I've spoken to, that had come to a preterist view of the end-times, I was pretty excited and wanted to tell everyone. And so I did. Kind of quietly at first. I started printing out pages here and there. Asking pointed questions related to the time statements found in the opening and closing chapters of Revelation. But most of the people I was talking to...Other School of Ministry students, had a lot on their plates and didn't really have the time to dedicate to this kind of thing or they really just didn't care. Eschatology was not their gig...They'd say things like, "I'm not worried about it too much...It's all gonna pan out in the end."

Needless to say I was really kind of surprised how little interest most people had. And those that would listen to me almost always had a question that I wasn't ready for at this point in my journey. And that's about the time when I came across an article online by a guy named David A. Green. It was called "101 Preterist Time-Indicators for the Second Coming of Christ - From Preterism: 101."

When I finished reading this article I had to pick my jaw up off of the cold, laminated counter top in the studio and wipe up copious amounts of drool. <---A little too descriptive...Maybe??? Anyhow...I was absolutely shocked to see just how many time statements there were indicating that the last days events found in the New Testament were nothing other than soon, near and at hand. I had thought that surely with all of this fine evidence printed out and in hand that someone would see what I was seeing. And so what was the first response I got from one of my School of Ministry brothers. "Well of course the end was near...And it still is. 2 Peter 3:8 'But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' It's only been a couple of days to God."

Clearly at this point my zeal was much stronger than my understanding of a fulfilled view of prophecy. And so I decided that I just needed to keep my mouth shut and study more.

The future was looking much brighter...Day 19

The future was looking much brighter. The doom and gloom of the futurist views that I had once held on to were now being replaced by a renewed sense of excitement in understanding the last days prophecies found in scripture as fulfilled quite victoriously within the time frame in which they were promised to take place.

Although...There I was...An employee of Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. A church that holds to a very literal interpretation of the scriptures...That is literal, unless it leads to absurdity. And all of a sudden I am faced with the reality that my very literal view that I had been holding to was no longer holding the water that it once used to. Sigh...<---Long drawn out sigh. 8)

One of the best things about working the overnight shift at the radio station is that it gave me ample time to study. If you remember, this was the primary reason that I was able to work full time and go to the School of Ministry. That following night I got into the station a little early to get some of my nightly duties wrapped up before my on-air shift started. I then proceeded to get all of my required studying done for school so that I could get to work on studying this new found way of understanding the scriptures from a fulfilled perspective.

And so with a few quick keystrokes I was on my way to my favorite internet search engine...Google. I typed in the word preterism. Holy mackerel...Ten's of thousands of hits. And then I typed in preterist. There were even more hits than the previous search. How could I have missed this for so long. 8) Anyhow...One of the first pages that I came across was www.preterism.us. A website that no longer exists aside from that wonderful online utility known as "The Wayback Machine." On this website there were 19 articles by a guy named David B. Curtis, who serves as the pastor of Berean Bible Church, in Chesapeake, Virginia. And one by a guy named Don K. Preston. Don is a speaker, radio host, and author of many books.

And so I started reading the articles one after the other. I was barely able to tear my self away to take care of my on-air duties at the station. Everything I was reading was making complete sense and I was becoming more and more excited with each and every paragraph. All of the problems that I had reconciling different issues within the futurist framework of eschatology were quickly fading away. Mind you, these articles weren't small by any means. It probably took me three days to get through them all with everything else that I was doing.

That morning when Lee Davis came in he found me full of excitement and with eyes as bright as a red red rose from having spent all night staring into a computer monitor in a dimly lit studio, having probably blinked no more than 7 times. 8) While I was in school he too had read a number of the articles and had found himself just as intrigued as I had. The lively discussions that Lee and I had each morning as we went through all of the articles on the website made up for the many months of animosity that had been created by the fruitless arguments over the futurist views that we once held. The both of us were now experiencing a renewed sense of excitement for a study of the scriptures. We were both greeting each other every morning with new things that we were now seeing that we had somehow missed before.

Where the Bible had once been quite simply printed words in black and white, we were now seeing a new, vibrant and living narrative that was reconciling issues that had once caused much confusion.

A New Day Had Dawned...Day 16

And so...It was those three articles in day 15, that were the final straw that broke the camel's back. And guess what...I was that camel. It was four o'clock in the morning and let's just say that I was very glad that the programming at the station was music at that time. In other words it was pretty easy to just let things go into auto. What a long hour that was...

Five o'clock rolls around and Lee Davis walks into the studio. "Hey Buddy...What's up?" I said, "Lee...I know you don't want to talk about eschatology with me...And you don't even have to respond to what I am about to say... What if we were both wrong? What if we had both been looking at things from the wrong perspective?" And so I gave him a short rundown of what happened the day before and where my research based on my classmates statement about Hank Hanegraaff had led me. As well I left the three articles I had just read up on the computer for him to read. And it was because of these three articles that the animosity between us was completely shattered. All of a sudden so many things that had been such strong points of contention over the last few months had completely faded away. The idea that, "All things written," could have been fulfilled, in the first century, upon the generation that Jesus came to suddenly opened up a channel of dialog that had been closed for many months.

Six o'clock rolls around and our news director Brian Perez comes in for his morning shift. Brian and I had spent a little time now and then talking about various subjects. And so I felt rather comfortable sharing with him about the articles I had come across and what they could have meant. He was rather open to what I had to say. As any good news hound should be. 8) But he had to get to work and so did I.

Later that morning as I went to class I was rather distracted by the articles that I had read earlier. That along with the fact that I had a laptop with wireless that connected to the churches wireless didn't really help me focus on the classes that day. I was rather distracted to say the least. When my classes were finished I had plenty of questions to ask and I wasn't very concerned with who the recipients of my inquiries were. I was filled with a new and revived interest in a subject that had left me frustrated and stymied over the previous months leading up to this ill fated day.

I wanted some answers...

The changing tide of a world and life view...Day 15

Having charted out the end times was an arduous task to say the least. Along with this there was a book that we were required to read by Chuck Smith that I had actually read that previous summer. It was called, "The Tribulation and The Church." A very easy read. We also had a weekly lecture that was a general overview of all the differing views of eschatology. I was hoping for something a little more indepth regarding each view but our time was limited.

An example of this was, "And then there is the preterist view which understands the last days as something that took place in the first century. That the book of Revelation was speaking of the fall of Jerusalem in 70ad. Yet this could not be the case because it was written some 30 years later...And just look around...Clearly we're not in the new heavens and earth." <--Room fills with laughter.

So...It's not as though all or most of the different views weren't presented. They were. However in my opinion the presentation of the views that were different from that of Calvary Chapel's weren't presented in a very fair light. They weren't even necessarily demonstrated to be wrong as much as they were just summarily dismissed. But of course I just nodded my head as we moved on to the next topic. After the class was over there was the typical sporatic conversations going on around the room as you would find any other day. I was putting my books away when I heard one of my brothers say that he had heard something about Hank Hanegraaff. That he had changed his views on eschatology to some form of Amillenialism. This of course caught my ear. But I was in a hurry that day to grab my surfboard and hit the beach for a little wave action.

I guess no matter how important eschatology is to me, surfing will always take first billing. 8)

That following night as I was wrapping up my studies, I had remembered what my friend Al Abdulla said in class. Something about Hank Hanegraaff's view of eschatology having changed. This triggered another memory. Probably about a year earlier, sometime in 2004, my friend Chandler Haynie who worked the evening shift at Kwave while engineering "The Bible Answerman," during the day, had told me that Hank had been re-examining his views on eschatology for 9 years now. Starting in about 1995. And that he was going to be coming out with a new book explaining his new view. But he was hesitant to tell me much more.

So...On that early morning in March 2005 I went onto google and did a search on, "Hank Hanegraaff + eschatology." And the first three results I read were the following three articles. And in this order.

Article #1

Article #2

Article #3

The third article takes a few minutes to read but well worth every minute of it. It is a transcript from a call Hank received on "The Bible Answerman," back in 1995. Right about the time Hank began re-examining his understanding of the end-times that led him to author and co-author a number of books that have got the authors of the Left Behind series in such an uproar. Which is dealt with in the first and second article posted above.

And so...It was these three articles that were the final straw that broke the camel's back. My world and life view would be forever changed from this moment forward...

So much for the easy life...Day 12

So...It was the fall of 2003 and I was beginning a two year course of study at the Calvary Chapel School of Ministry. Some of the first year classes were beginning Greek, biblical counseling, practical ministry, teaching the Bible verse by verse and weekly teaching by Chuck Smith. There was also a weekly chapel that would be taught by a second year brother and worship would be led by students as well. And on Friday mornings a pastor from a Calvary Chapel affiliate would come in and share his experience as a Calvary Chapel pastor. Sometimes this would consist of a personal testimony or what God was doing in their life or church. Whatever the topic, this time was what I felt to be the most rewarding and informative of anything we learned.

One of the things that I came to realize rather quickly as a first year brother was that this was not going to be an easy road to travel. The homework load alone was rather daunting. But we needed to be faithful to get all of our homework done. Even if we simply turned in a piece of paper with our name on it acknowledging that we know that the work needed to be done by that time. We would still have to get the work done eventually if we wanted to graduate. Funny thing is, it wasn't usually the book work or reading that would catch people up. It was the five years of Chuck Smith's teaching that we were required to listen to that caught up to the students. This was not uncommon at the School of Ministry or at the Calvary Chapel Bible College as well. For me however it wasn't that bad, especially since I had a portable MP3 player that I kept in my pocket at all times. All Chuck...All the time baby. 8) I was fortunate in that I was able to get through the series by the middle of the third semester. Nothing against Chuck...But I was sure glad to be done with that assignment.

At about the same time I had begun feeling a certain conviction that I needed to become better acquainted with my Bible. And so I began with the one area that I hadn't ever really spent much time in. The Prophets. And so I started with Isaiah and worked my way all the way through the book of Revelation. And I did this with the help of my good old trusty mp3 version of the Bible. After about 32 hours of listening, which was about 1-2 weeks over all and I had accomplished something that I had been wanting to do but was unable to find the motivation. And so I did it again...And again. Three times in total. Isaiah to Revelation. I actually felt like I was getting a pretty good grasp on what was going on in the prophets.

Initially I would have thought that my repetitive listening of the scriptures would have confirmed and enlightened what I had been learning by having listened to all of Pastor Chuck's teachings through the Bible. And it did to some extent. But more than that, it left me feeling like there was something bigger going on. Some kind of meta-narrative. That is...A bigger story that was going on that was made up of all the other little stories throughout. Something that is missed when the Bible is broken up into weekly teachings. And this was about the time that I was having to start my required course of study on eschatology/end times for the School of Ministry.

My so called simply life at Calvary Chapel was about to get A LOT more complicated...

One door closes and another one opens...Day 5

Having almost completed my third semester at Long Beach City College in my pursuit of a degree in Speech Communications I began working at K-Wave 107.9 an outreach ministry of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. This was an incredible opportunity in a number of ways. I was getting to use first hand the skills that I had been learning in school and as a bonus I was getting a front row view of the inner workings of a rather large multi-faceted ministry. It seemed pretty clear that God had me here for a reason.

A few weeks later I was over at L.B.C.C. playing racquetball with my friend Danny Martinez. Something that we had been doing on a regular basis for at least a couple of months. I met Danny in a beginning music theory class that I had taken to fulfill one of my electives. He had recently moved out here from Chicago to South Central Los Angeles as part of a call to plant a multi-racial church. While we were playing he had asked me if I had gotten all of the classes I wanted for the fall. I gazed over at him with a puzzling look on my face and I said, "Ummm...No why?" Needless to say I hadn't opened up a piece of mail from the college explaining that they had a new way of registering for classes and that it would start earlier than previous semesters. Dohhhh...

To my chagrin I was unable to get even one class I needed. The telephone enrollment system had shut me down. I couldn't even get any electives that I could have used to fulfill general studies requirements and underwater basket weaving was just not my style. 8)

And yes...That noise you just heard...That was a door closing.

The following Saturday evening I pulled up to the radio station a little earlier than usual. As I was getting out of my car I ran into one of the security guards that worked for the church. His name was Mark. He had asked me how I was doing and about what was going on in my life. In the course of the conversation I told him how I had been unable to get any of the classes that I needed for the fall semester at L.B.C.C.. He then told me about the Calvary Chapel School of Ministry, and how he had just finished the first of a two year course in pastoral ministry. At this point he had to get going but he said that I should consider attending the School of Ministry and that he would pray for me considering the matter.

That night as I sat in the frigid climate controlled studio at K-Wave, I would have a lot to think about before I would see the sun rise over Irvine.