Ep. 74: How Should We Interpret Biblical Prophecy? A Deep Dive into Zechariah 14

Jacob Winograd [00:00:32]:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Biblical Anarchy podcast, project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and part of the Christians for Liberty network. This week and every week on biblical anarchy, we seek to live counterculture to the empire of man and to instead seek the kingdom of god by unpacking what the Bible teaches about

Jacob Winograd [00:00:51]:
government, authority, and human relationships.

Jacob Winograd [00:00:55]:
I am your host, Jacob Winograd. For today’s episode well, it’s been a while since I recorded a full episode. Let me start with that. And that’s because my wife recently gave birth, so we’re now a family of 7, 3 boys and 2 girls who welcomed our second daughter into the world Sunday from the time I’m recording this, this past Sunday. And so we’re happy about that. So I won’t be doing as many live streams in the near future, but I’m still gonna be doing some solo content. And I’m excited to talk about some of the things that I’ve sort of been hinting at in some of the previous episodes. Like, I talked about a little bit this a little bit of the stuff I’m gonna be talking about today back in episode 71, a few episodes ago.

Jacob Winograd [00:01:44]:
There should be 74 if

Jacob Winograd [00:01:45]:
I have my note correct. And,

Jacob Winograd [00:01:49]:
yeah, I’ve if you guys remember, if you guys are long time listeners to the show, if you’re if you’re not, you should go back and check out some of the older episodes I did. I think they were like in the forties fifties of the show, like late last year. A little bit early this year in 2024, I was doing a lot of content on dispensationalism and covenant theology and, you know, the relationship between Israel and the church and the identity of Israel and going into texts like Galatians 34 and Romans 9 through 11 and tackling a lot of the dispensationalist worldview from the covenantal aspect. And I said I was gonna dive into the eschatology and that side of it, you know, in future episodes. And I’ve been working on that for a while. And then sort of what happened along the way is I started getting more back into engaging with Christian nationalism and right wing populism and a lot of insofar as a lot of that tends to be, you know, Christian based, it’s based in postmillennialism, which is also opposed to dispensationalism but makes other eschatological claims that in their extreme forms or in their excesses can cause problems. And so I talked a little bit about this in episode 71 and that I’m going to start getting into this more in some upcoming episodes.

Jacob Winograd [00:03:19]:
And part of the problem getting into this

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is that there’s so many angles to try to tackle. And I don’t know if it’s best to, you know, do one really long episode or a bunch of small ones. When you’re when you’re looking into this subject, you hear a lot of different people broaching the topic with different sorts of claims. Right? Like some people, you’ll hear them say that the right way to approach Christian theology is to start with eschatology first. And then some people say, no, you gotta get your Christology right. And some people say, no, it’s all about soteriology and predestination. You know, and I have sort of a reformed leaning myself, although I’m not like capital r reformed mainly because I’m a baptist, I guess. I’m not a believer in infant baptism.

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Although I’m not I’m not super hung up on that subject in either direction. I I don’t begrudge my Pedobaptisy brothers and sisters.

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But anyway, so how do

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we approach theology? Right? What should our foundation be? Is it Christology? Is it soteriology? Is it eschatology? Well, I I feel like the problem is we’re sometimes thinking that any one

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of those are sort of like good enough foundations

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on their own and don’t have to like work in tandem with the other 2. And that sort of what’s going to spring into what I wanna talk about today.

Jacob Winograd [00:04:48]:
You know, I have criticisms of sort of

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the different camps within the the entire landscape of eschatology. Because there’s amillenialism, there’s postmillennial, there’s premillenial, but you kinda have even subgroups within those 3 groups. And I I have different types of criticisms for each group. But I think the underlying disagreement I have, the only issue I have is when I feel like any one of these camps causes disunity in kind of the 3 categories I just laid out. If our sort of view on eschatology and on the kingdom of god doesn’t really line up with our views on the new covenant or doesn’t line up with our Christology, doesn’t line up with our like, these things should probably all fit together and be part of the entire unfolding of god’s redemptive plan.

Jacob Winograd [00:05:44]:
And I guess to be

Jacob Winograd [00:05:46]:
clear, I I I suppose premillennialists and postmillennialists would say that they are doing that. But I feel like, you know, on the surface, they they make arguments for how these things are reconciled. But upon deeper reflection of biblical prophecy of the covenants and all that, I’m not sure that they actually do have the level of unity that I think that can exist in a properly understood a millennial perspective. So this is gonna be kind of the beginning of a series of episodes. And I don’t I don’t know exactly how it’s gonna take form because I have

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I have just so much

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on this, so many notes, so many passages I wanna get into. And I don’t wanna have these unnatural breaks in in between episodes, but I also don’t want to ramble on for 2 hours for every episode. So it I I’ve been putting so much work into it trying to get it perfect. But at some point, I just said, you know what? I just gotta start talking. I got an I got a lot to talk about. I’m just gonna kind of trust my, you know, combination of the Holy Spirit plus my own extemporaneous and podcast experience that I’ll say what I need to say, find natural breaking points and move on, you know, you know, break it up naturally as we go along. And, you know, things we’re getting into, it’s the finer points of theology, but they’re not unimportant. There are things that are not typically talked about maybe on a Sunday morning, probably more of like a Sunday school or, you know, even in seminary people dive into this.

Jacob Winograd [00:07:27]:
And I guess that there’s not a perfect I’ve been trying to think of the perfect way to lead into it. But I think the best way is to sort of take, you know, just I’m gonna start by defining some different categories and terms here and just work into that. So it is gonna be a

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little bit, you know, I I guess

Jacob Winograd [00:07:49]:
a little bit, you know, extra heavy on the, educational side. Before I dive into it, please make sure if you like what I’m doing here. Listen, it it’s not easy to find time to record this content, to put the time into research and gathering sources and, you know, presenting content for you guys that I think is, you know, that that I hope is valuable. I hope that, you know, helps to enrich your faith and your knowledge of what the Bible teaches and to, you know, help us promote the message of the gospel, which is freedom, you know, not just freedom from, you know, in the libertarian sense, but, you know, ultimate freedom, freedom that we find in Christ. And this all ties together. And I’m listen, I’m super passionate about this. I love to do this. And I don’t like asking for people to support the show.

Jacob Winograd [00:08:40]:
I just wanna talk about what I wanna talk about. But in order to do this, you know, some things have to get paid for. And the Libertarian Christian Institute is a nonprofit. So we only operate off of donations from, you know, mostly listeners like you. So if you go to biblical anarchy podcast.com, if you wanna sign up for $10 or more a month, become an LCI insider, that, of course, gets you all sorts of good perks, which I’ve talked about before. And if nothing else, if you can please like this video, if you’re watching on YouTube or Rumble and, you know, comment, help boost it up the algorithms, subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already. And then if you’re on Apple or Spotify or any of those podcatchers, leaving a 5 star review, especially the written reviews, those are that’s super I I know it it just takes a couple minutes if you’re able to put something in there. It means a lot.

Jacob Winograd [00:09:30]:
It helps me, you know, be encouraged to know that there’s people out there that appreciate the work that’s going into this. And, you know, I got I got 5 kids. Right? And every minute counts. And I wanna be able to keep doing this and keep doing it at a at a high output, both in terms of quantity and quality. So, alright, so eschatology. Let’s get into this. Eschatology is the study of the end times. So, again, starting out real basic here.

Jacob Winograd [00:10:02]:
And the there’s, as I said earlier, we’re trying to find ways to talk about this stuff where it all fits together. And I feel like sometimes when we’re talking about eschatology, we’re focusing too much on, well, eschatology is just like, you know, predicting the future. Right? Like, people think, like, left behind and they think about predicting future events and the antichrist and all this. And that’s all part of eschatology, but that’s also kinda like maybe just the tip of the iceberg. Because it’s not just like, you know, what happens at the end. It’s about our understanding of what is the culmination of god’s redemptive plan through history. So it’s not it can’t be disconnected from what comes before, like, it’s some random disconjointed thing. So we have to understand what the kingdom of god is.

Jacob Winograd [00:10:58]:
We have to understand what the covenants are and how, you know, what are the what is the interaction between these different covenants? And then look at the end times as not this separate thing, but rather as sort of the exclamation point as the final sentence of a comprehensive united story that, you know, redemptive arc that that began, you know, back in Genesis when it says that the there’ll be enmity between the woman’s offspring and the serpent and that, her offspring will crush the serpent’s head and the serpent will bruise his heel. I mean, that’s that is, you know, going back as far as Genesis, a promise of redemption, a promise that the fall isn’t the end, but rather it’s a it’s a it’s a beginning. It’s a beginning of a long story that displays god god’s glory, his love, his justice, all his attributes. And so eschatology has to fit into all of this. He’s already defeated sin, right, when Jesus died on the cross, when he rose from the grave and he ascended into heaven. You know, Jesus has defeated sin. He’s defeated death, but they are defeated in an ultimate sense. But in our temporal reality, the temporal sense that we live in, we’re still waiting for the final culmination of the age that we live in.

Jacob Winograd [00:12:24]:
And so there’s this already not yet aspect to the kingdom of god and all the different, you know, eschatological camps would believe in some version of that.

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So we’re gonna look into the different types of views

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of the millennium. Because when we’re the reason why they’re divided, if you don’t know maybe this is probably review for a lot of people, but if you don’t know, the 3 camps, a millennial, pre millennial, post millennial, well, they’re they’re all different takes on what the millennium is. So in Revelation 20, this is the passage that speaks about a 1000 year reign of Christ on earth. And so we’re asking what is that millennium about? What is it what does it mean

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for Christ to reign on earth? And start

Jacob Winograd [00:13:12]:
with the amillennial view. The amillennial perspective would say that this is a symbolic millennium and that it’s really symbolic of the current church age that we live in and the current reign of Christ through his body, the church. And it’s a period of time between Christ’s first and second coming. So we believe that Christ is currently reigning, and it’s not a literal 1000 years, but it’s a spiritual reign in the hearts of the believers and Christ in heaven, lord of all creation. But not a literal 1000 years, not a a literal kingdom on earth manifested in in that kind of way. Now post millennial and premillennial are gonna have overlaps with amillennialism and overlaps with each other. And so you could kind of do a Venn diagram here. There you can find dissimilarities, which I’m gonna talk about, but you can find some similarities.

Jacob Winograd [00:14:06]:
For example, with postmillennialism, put both postmillennial and the amillennialist would say that the millennium reign happens before Christ’s second coming. But then the postmillennial is going to have a wrap with the premillennialist where they don’t view it as merely a symbolic reign but that there will be a, you know, I guess, to varying degrees, a literal kingdom, whether it’s, you know, like a literally a kingdom or it’s just a golden age of Christianity is what a lot of postmillennialists believe. They’re they think there’s gonna be a period where the gospel has progressively transformed society leading to a golden age of Christian ethics and righteousness on earth, and that’ll be the millennium. And then will come the second coming of Christ. You’ll often see a lot of overlap, like I said, between beyond millennial and postmillennial because they do place the second coming after the millennium reign, but then there is overlap between post and pre because they do believe in more of a literal understanding of the millennium rather than a spiritual or symbolic one. And then you have people who are, you know, obviously maybe like something in between. Right? Like I consider myself kind of an optimistic amillennialist, where I don’t think it’s guaranteed that there’s gonna be this golden age to Christianity. But I do think that we do have a duty to sort of try to make the world around us better through the preaching of the gospel and through the impact of Christianity and the church in the world as a sort of prophetic witness and that this can be seen as like, yeah, we do have a, I I think, somewhat of a call to dominion to try to transform society around us.

Jacob Winograd [00:15:56]:
But I think we transform society around us through culture and through what we do as the royal priests that we are, right? Because I I believe that we as the church, we are the continuation of Israel, and so we’re called to be a royal priesthood. And so we are united with Christ, the true Israel, and we are to have that spiritual reign of Christ in the body of Christ here on earth. And so we should transform the society around us, but we don’t do that through, you know, sort of physical or conventional means sort of like what man would expect. And this is why people missed Jesus’s ministry at the time because they kept expecting him to be like the kingdoms of this world. But what did he say? My kingdom is not of this world. But that doesn’t mean that, you know, some amillennialists might get to the point where they can be overly retreatist. I talked about this in that episode 71. And I’m it’s just like a I’m not a futurist, and I’m not a retreatist either.

Jacob Winograd [00:17:00]:
It’s like I don’t think that you have to fall into either camp. I think you can you can try to transform culture. You can be optimistic, but you shouldn’t be so zealous in that that you think that you have to force it, nor should you be so pessimistic that you don’t try to impact culture through Christ like means and ways. You have yeah, like I said, and then on the post millennial side as well, you’ll have those who, you know, maybe are they say it’s somewhat symbolic and somewhat real and then you’ll have, you know, hyper post millennialists who think it’s, you know, literally gonna be a physical kingdom and that, you know, it’s actually our job to sort of make that happen in a sense. The, premillennialist then will interpret the so they have something in common with the postmillennial, which is that they think there’ll be a literal kingdom. The premillennial has a little bit overlap with the amillennial insofar as somehow millennialists, you know, they aren’t expecting things to get better and the premillennialists are also not really expecting things to get better necessarily. But the premillennialists are distinct in terms of the order of end time events compared to post to Nah because the premillennial interprets the millennium as a literal future 1000 year reign of Christ after the second coming. So the premillennialists often emphasize a literal interpretation of prophecy, believing that many old testament promises and prophecies, particularly those concerning Israel, will be fulfilled during this future reign.

Jacob Winograd [00:18:37]:
Now there’s different types of premillennialism, and these different types are more distinguished than maybe the different types of amillennial and postmillennial. You have sort of like historic premillennialism, and then you have dispensational premillennialism. Dispensational premillennialism, that’s a specific form of premillennialism that divides history into distinct periods or dispensations. And it maintains a really sharp strict separation between God’s plan for Israel and God’s plan for church. And so you could even say a lot of even historic premillennialists do this to some extent, right, compared to the post and to the amillennial. The post and amillennial tend to tend to be more united in their view of covenants and sort of not and viewing one covenant of grace kind of like playing through from the old to the new covenant. Whereas premillennialists see somewhat more of a divide and then the dispensationalists see a like a, you know, like a wall separating the 2. And I think there’s a separate plan for the Jewish people, separate covenant for them than there is for the Gentiles and the Christians and the church.

Jacob Winograd [00:19:55]:
It’s sort of sort of people will describe it as a sort of dual covenant theology rather than a one covenant theology. Although it gets complicated because even, you know, the, covenant theology types from the reformed world, you know, they see all things as the working through the covenant of grace, but then there’s also sort of a covenant of works operating alongside of it. But the covenant of works is only fulfilled by Christ. No man as a is able to live up to the covenant of works and everyone is made righteous through the covenant of grace both in the old covenant and the new. And so, yeah, the dispensationalist sees a disunity in god’s redemptive plan. But Post and I generally see a the opposite. They see quite a unity. But both the both the premillennialists of the historic and the dispensational believe in a future millennium kingdom after the coming of Christ.

Jacob Winograd [00:20:50]:
And they believe there’ll be a both types believe there’ll be a restoration of Israel, the nation, or rebuilding of the temple, etcetera. And they view the bill that dispensationalism adds things like a pre tribulation rapture or believers are taken up

Jacob Winograd [00:21:05]:
to heaven before a period of tribulation on earth. And, yeah, there’s

Jacob Winograd [00:21:10]:
a whole lot of other extra things dispensationalist premillennialism is adding into the equation. But they’re both employing different extra different intensities of a literalist in hermeneutic as opposed to the post millennial and the amillennial are generally operating through different types of a fulfillment hermeneutic. And so that’s sort of what we have to explore, you know, what is the proper hermeneutic here for reading the bible? Are we supposed to take the words off the text and, you know, it’s like, hey, if it’s described as 7 headed beast, it describes a 7 headed beast. If it describes, you know, you

Jacob Winograd [00:21:51]:
know, the antichrist being, you know,

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in power and Satan being let loose on the earth for a certain time, like, you know, that’s describing literal events and that’s gonna happen. Whereas the post and amillennial, you know, will have different views on perhaps the realities of the Millennium Kingdom that exists before a second coming, but they generally are more in the partial Preterist camp, meaning that they think a lot of prophecy has either already been fulfilled or they think it gets fulfilled, you know, spiritually or typologically rather than literally in

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in many cases. And so

Jacob Winograd [00:22:32]:
that is where we’re going to dive more into this, this literalist versus fulfillment hermeneutic. Because finding out which one of these is the correct way to approach biblical prophecy is gonna help inform us as to, you know, what provides the best unity of all these different texts and then a unity between our Christology, our eschatology, our covenant theology, etcetera. Now, again, I do hold to a reformed view of covenant theology, although I don’t think that the conclusions, they are uniquely reformed because you can even find church fathers from Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and just pre Protestant traditions that agree with this view of the covenants. Reformed theology tends to systematize it in a way that’s much neater to be presented, I would say. It’s again, you know, continuity versus discontinuity. And covenant theology, it holds to a continuity rather than a discontinuity. And then another element of covenant theology is internalization of the law, that the law was once external, written on tablets of stone, but then we take passages like Jeremiah 31 that speak of an internal transformation being essential. And then the 3rd element being that Christ is the fulfillment of the prophets.

Jacob Winograd [00:24:01]:
We he fulfills the roles of the prophet, priest, and king. And then through him, all the promises of god find their yes and amen. That’s in 2nd Corinthians 120. And, everything, the sacrificial system, the temple, this is talked about in the book of Hebrews. Like, all these things were foreshadowings of Christ, and Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of all these things through his atoning work on the cross and his body, the church. So I would say that postmillennialism and premillennialism have another thing in common, which is they offer might be more compelling narratives about the future to our flesh, I think. Because we just wanna believe that, yeah, like, there’s gonna be, like, this literal reign and that, like, at some point, yeah, like, it’s gonna be this, you know, this manifestation of Christ on earth in this in this sort of, like, very epic, dramatic, plain out fashion. And now I think at the second coming, it probably will be somewhat dramatic, and some of these things will happen.

Jacob Winograd [00:25:00]:
But I think that sometimes we’re working, you know, too much along the same lines as what the Jews Jewish people at the time of Jesus were where their expectations are didn’t match reality. The expectations of Christ’s first coming and establishment of his kingdom didn’t, you know he didn’t fulfill their expectations. And I think it’s probably wise to think that if we have these big lofty expectations like post millennialists and pre millennialists do, perhaps there’s reason to think that maybe things aren’t gonna be fulfilled quite that way in this quite literal physical way. And there’s other pitfalls, I think, post both post millennial and premillennial have. And I wanna get into a couple of those pitfalls. So postmillennialism, say 2 major pitfalls it has are one would be the overemphasis on human effort, which is ironic because

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a lot of post mills tend

Jacob Winograd [00:25:59]:
to be reformed and they tend to, you know, reformed as Calvinistic and says it all depends on God’s works and not not ours. But postmillennialism, I would say often places too much emphasis on the church’s role in bringing about the millennium. And this can lead to a triumphalism that assumes the church’s success is a prerequisite for Christ’s return. And I would say that’s dangerous in that it’s potentially overshadowing the sufficiency of what Christ has already done, of Christ’s already finished work. This can even play into, you know, like the postmillennialist will actually and I’ve heard people like Jeff Durbin and others talk about how the Jewish objections to Jesus are correct insofar as Jews will point out that there are specific prophecies that Jesus didn’t fulfill. And it’s like, well, he has to come back and fulfill those. And it’s like, well, a lot of the ones he did fill also didn’t meet the Jewish people’s expectations because they were expecting a literal manifestation of certain things rather than looking at it through the more fulfillment hermeneutic, and we’ll get into that. But I’d say the second concern of postmillennialism is a risk of becoming overly heavy handed.

Jacob Winograd [00:27:14]:
That when you believe in that first part that, you know, it kinda depends on our effort and that the church has to bring about the millennium, then there’s a danger of trying to force society to conform to Christian values, leading to a form of dominion theology that may not align, I would say, with the New Testament’s teachings on the church’s role in the world. Now premillennialism, again, I think makes the opposite. Instead of focusing on, you know, focusing too much on human effort, it focuses too much on the future and not enough on the present. Premillennialism often emphasizes the future physical reign of Christ to the extent that it can lead to a retreatist mentality. And believers might focus too much on waiting for Christ’s second coming to establish his kingdom and but neglecting the current spiritual reign of Christ and the transformation transformative power of the gospel today. So again, it’s not we don’t have to be hyper futurists or hyper retreatists. And then again, I think there’s a problem if we approach the the Bible with this literalist method. Now I am a you know, I believe in the inspiration of scripture.

Jacob Winograd [00:28:24]:
I would even go as far as to say I’m a inerrantist, although I’m I don’t feel the need to die on that hill. I’m also happy to use the term biblical infallibility because I know some people get a little hung up on the Chicago statement of inerrancy, which I might even have some slight in the pics with myself. But I just I generally, I don’t think there’s parts of the Bible that are uninspired and ultimately untrue. But I think there’s a difference between saying the Bible doesn’t fail and that the Bible is inerrant and that the Bible should be interpreted literally in all in all places and that a literalist sort of like because there’s it’s not just literalist. It’s also like how we interpret words. And some people are textualists and some people are contextualists. And it’s better to understand what you’re reading by understanding the context and reading all the words in connection to the chapter, the book, and the entire Bible rather than to sort of like, if you’ve ever read a good way to describe this, if you ever read the chat the children books, Amelia Padilla, like, it’s the title, where Amelia Padilla takes things so literally that she gets them wrong. Like, I’m trying to think of examples that there was one where she’s working for, you know, as, like, a as a maid for this family, and they say to dress the chicken.

Jacob Winograd [00:29:47]:
Right? Now obviously they mean like, you know, like get the chicken out of the fridge and like, you know, dress it to be cooked, but she actually gets the chicken out of the fridge and puts it in clothing. So like that’s the difference between a like a textual and a contextual interpretation of words, right? Like you kind of have to know like because some people might go through the Bible and interpret things in a way where they can, you know, sort of like, yeah, all the words can mean this. It’s like, okay, but like if we read it in the greater context, does that really make sense? And so, yeah, we have to we have to understand what that means. I’m remembering more of the examples. Like one of the things they said in the Melia Padilla book was to change the towels and linens in the bathroom. And so she literally changes them by dyeing them or cutting them up and, like, putting patterns in them and something. Like, we told me to change them, so I made them different. Yeah.

Jacob Winograd [00:30:41]:
It’s you know, anyway, that if you look up the Amelia it was like read one Amelia Padilla book, and you’ll understand what I mean. Why the difference between saying the Bible is true and doesn’t make errors and saying we should read it literally. Because there’s a the one way leads to absurdities. The other way is, you know, the way language works, understanding that.

Jacob Winograd [00:31:03]:
So to dive a little bit more

Jacob Winograd [00:31:05]:
to premillennialism, again, historic versus dispensationalist. I would say the historic premillennialist does see some continuity in church history, and I think it’s you know, I would be fine to say that I’ve had pre millennialists on my show before. I’ve talked to Raisa Browning. He’s a contributor at the Libertarian Christian Institute. I love Raisa, and I agree with him on a lot of things. We just don’t share the same eschatology. But his is a pre millennialism that I think is faithful to church history, and that is faithful to the you know, a more balanced view of the dichotomy between Israel and the church and with covenants and all that. So I’m not saying that every form of postmillennialism or even premillennialism is necessarily bad, but I’m saying that they, the, the, the small errors I think they make are, are slippery slopes of a sort that other people get trapped in and, and fall into greater inconsistency.

Jacob Winograd [00:32:05]:
And then the dispensationalist is, like, the more dangerous form of premillennialism because of the severe errors in in the cove in their calculation and understanding of God’s covenant and the sharp distinction between Israel and the church.

Jacob Winograd [00:32:21]:
And then being even more focused on

Jacob Winograd [00:32:24]:
the literalist interpretations of different end time scenarios. So the premillennialists, the postmillennialists, they’re gonna look at key prophetic passages. Right? And they’re gonna say that these have to be fulfilled literally. This is especially true for the pre millennialist. Cause like I said, the post millennial does often take a partial Preterist view and does think a lot of these things already happened. And so this is one of the areas where there’s overlap. But especially true for the premillennialists, although some of these are things postmillennialists will cite as well, where they are gonna bring out these key passages and say that these are describing future events that are related to a literal second coming of Christ. Zechariah 12 through 14 is probably one of the biggest ones.

Jacob Winograd [00:33:13]:
These chapters predict future events concerning Israel and a literal second coming of Christ. And so the premillennialist sees the promises and prophecies in these passages as yet to be fulfilled. Ezekiel 40 through 48. Excuse me. I have something in my eye. These chapters describe a future temple and a restored Israel. The premillennialists argue that this is a yet to be fulfilled prophecy that will occur during Christ’s millennial reign, whereas the fulfillment hermeneutic would see this as symbolic of the church, for example, in in a spiritual temple of god. There’s Israel 11 1 through 10, which speaks of the peaceful reign of the Messiah, which pre and postmillennialists will point to this and be like, yeah, there needs to be a literal future reign where there’s peace on earth because Christ is ruling.

Jacob Winograd [00:34:08]:
Whereas the fulfillment hermeneutic would look at this and go, well, the peaceful reign of Christ is understood as his current spiritual reign and that he is bringing peace. But is it is it a all at once physical manifestation of peace? Or is this a peace because there is a already completed and playing out through the end of the age to be fully realized victory over death and sin and a reconciliation between creation, mankind, and the creator.

Jacob Winograd [00:34:40]:
So that’s, again, another view

Jacob Winograd [00:34:44]:
of the splitting of the two views there. There’s obviously all also Revelation 20, which is the direct reference to the 1,000 year reign and the pre millennialists and the post see this as a more or less literal period, whether it comes before or after Christ’s coming. But the, the amillennialists and the fulfillment hermeneutic would say that, you know, this is the church age being spoke of in a symbolic way, especially because it’s an end time prophecy. And the way in which it’s written is more the language and the imagery and all that. The apocalyptic yeah. Apocalyptic literature and whatnot often takes this sort of like dramatic form. And it’s not always proper to read those things as describing literal things, but rather they’re being, you know, using this vivid imagery and sort of like drama to describe present realities sometimes that are also like future repeating patterns.

Jacob Winograd [00:35:47]:
And so I would say that’s, you

Jacob Winograd [00:35:49]:
know, like the antichrist isn’t one person. It’s a it’s a sort of pattern. It’s a spirit. It is something that repeats throughout history. Like Nero might have been in some ways like the first antichrist, but he’s far from the last one. Right? So I wanna tie it back. I kinda give you brief summaries of Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Revelation, but I wanna focus in for the remainder of this episode on Zach Zechariah 14. So Zechariah 14:4 is a verse that is used by those who hold to the more literalist interpretation of the prophecies.

Jacob Winograd [00:36:28]:
And this verse describes Yahweh standing on a mount of olives causing it to split in 2 forming a massive valley. And at first glance, this imagery might seem to directly correspond with the second coming of Christ where he returns in power and glory to establish his kingdom on earth. A closer examination within historical and theological context, and I’m trying to be contextual here, I would say suggest that this passage may actually refer to events that unfolded during the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD. So in the 1st century, the Jewish nation was under severe Roman oppression, leading to multiple uprisings that culminated in the Jewish Roman war. During this period, Jesus had explicitly warned his followers of the impending destruction of the temple and the city in Jerusalem. In Matthew 2415 through 16, he instructs his disciples, so when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place, let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. And this prediction aligns with the historical flight of Christians from Jerusalem to Pella, a city in the Decapolis, as they escaped the Roman siege. The mention of fleeing to the mountains in Zechariah 145 can be seen as a symbolic reference

Jacob Winograd [00:38:01]:
to this event. And the

Jacob Winograd [00:38:04]:
rather than understanding the splitting of the mountain olives as a literal geological event that’s gonna happen in the future, this can be interpreted as representing the providential escape route provided by god for the early Christians. And this underscores the importance of seeing prophetic literature, I would say, not just through the lens of a future fulfillment, but also through the realities faced by 1st century believers who were the first receivers of these, you know, of some of these prophecies. Now and then moving beyond just the historical context, if we look closer at the context, you know, in in Zechariah itself, we encounter more symbolic interpretation. The living waters should be looked at. That’s in Zechariah 14:8. These waters are said to flow out of Jerusalem half towards the eastern sea and half towards the western sea continuing in summer and winter. Now a literalist reading might expect a physical river to emerge from Jerusalem in the future. And you know what? Like, to be

Jacob Winograd [00:39:13]:
fair, like, I’m not even trying to judge

Jacob Winograd [00:39:16]:
the premillennialists too harshly here. I mean, if we pull up the passage and read it, it’s not like I’m not saying it’s obvious on a first reading that this is meant to be read symbolically. So let’s we’re treated here. You know, behold, a day is coming for the lord when spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst, for I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the house is plundered and the woman assaulted. Like I used the word there on YouTube. Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations as when he fights on the day of battle. On that day, his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in 2 from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the mount shall move northward and the other half southward.

Jacob Winograd [00:40:11]:
And you shall flee from flee to the valley of my mountains for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azael and or Azel. As you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, then the lord my god will come and all the holy ones with them. And on that day, there shall be no light, cold, or frost, and there shall be a unique day, which is known to the lord neither day nor night, but at evening time, there shall be light. On that day, living waters shall flow out of Jerusalem from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half to the western sea, and it shall continue as in winter. And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day, the Lord will be 1, his name 1. The land shall be turned in to a plain from Geba to Rimmon, south of Jerusalem, but Jerusalem shall remain a loft on its site from the gate of Benjamin to the place of the former gate to the corner gate to the tower of Hananel to the king’s, wine presses. It shall never it shall be inhabited, for there shall never again be a decree of utter destruction.

Jacob Winograd [00:41:21]:
The Jerusalem shall dwell in security, and this shall be the plague which the lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem. Their flesh will rot while they are standing on their feet. Their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. Keeps going on talking about surrounding nations and plagues falling upon them. And then everyone who survives shall go up to worship the lord and come and worship him, you know, so

Jacob Winograd [00:41:54]:
the ones who repent will

Jacob Winograd [00:41:56]:
be saved and the ones who don’t who go to war against Jerusalem will be destroyed. So you can read this in this literal way. Right? When it’s talked about living waters, you can read this and expect a physical river to emerge from Jerusalem in the future. Right? However, I think that when you’re reading this more contextually, this imagery aligns more closely with the spiritual blessings in life that flow from the work of Christ. In John 738, John declares, whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. This statement was made in the context of the feast of tabernacles, a festival that Zechariah also mentions in chapter 14. The living water that Jesus speaks of represents the holy spirit, which is spoken of in John 7 verse 39, who was given to believers after Jesus was glorified. And so the waters in Zechariah 14:8 can be seen as a metaphor for the life giving presence of the holy spirit, which began to flow from Jerusalem after Pentecost when the spirit was poured out on the believers gathered there.

Jacob Winograd [00:43:05]:
A critical passage that I think we need

Jacob Winograd [00:43:08]:
to look into to help us understand this is that

Jacob Winograd [00:43:12]:
very beginning of Matthew’s gospel

Jacob Winograd [00:43:16]:
in chapter 3, John was preparing the way for Jesus, proclaims repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. And then and then Jesus himself declared that too when he started his ministry. The kingdom wasn’t this far off thing. It was it was now. When Christ’s ministry was finished here on earth, it was the declaration. It was the it was the evidence, the proof. His death and resurrection, it conquered death and sin. It, it released us from our bondage and it also proclaimed him as king to the, to, to the world, to the cosmos, you know, because he, he couldn’t have been our savior if he wasn’t our king.

Jacob Winograd [00:43:55]:
He’s our, our Lord and our savior. You can’t really have one without the other. I like the way that so R. C. Sproul, I’m a big fan of, in his teachings on the kingdom of God, emphasizes that the phrase at hand again suggests something imminent and present. The Greek word being an or angizo. I’d only look up these pronunciations ahead of time. I read it.

Jacob Winograd [00:44:18]:
I understand it. Don’t crucify me. Bad choice of words on the pronunciations. But it’s translated as at hand and indicates that the kingdom was near in time, not distance. And so Jesus and John’s message was not about a far off future event, but a reality that was breaking into the present age through the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. And, again, it’s not even just like a modern reformed thing that Sproul comes up comes up with. We look to early church fathers. The we also have this view.

Jacob Winograd [00:44:52]:
You know, looking at passages like Luke 17 and 21, you know, it all the all the miracles and teachings and exorcisms that that those were the signs that the kingdom of god was in their midst. Oregon,

Jacob Winograd [00:45:05]:
one of

Jacob Winograd [00:45:05]:
the early church fathers spoke extensively about the kingdom of god being within us. And he interpreted the kingdom as the reign of god in the hearts and lives of believers initiated by Christ’s first coming. In his commentary on Matthew, Oregon states, quote, the kingdom of god is at hand and the kingdom of has come to all who are prepared to receive Christ within them. Augustine argued in his book, the city of god, that the, the kingdom is manifesting in the church and Christ reigned through the hearts of the faithful. And while the kingdom will be fully realized in the eschaton, it is already present in the church through the sacraments, the preaching of the work sorry, preaching of the word and the work of the holy spirit. So the Jerusalem referred to in Zechariah 14, again, you can read that as a literal Jerusalem, or you can, understand that this is symbolic that

Jacob Winograd [00:46:05]:
that, so like, and there there’s

Jacob Winograd [00:46:08]:
precedence for this. It’s not just like here, in Galatians 4 verse 26, Paul speaks of the Jerusalem above, which he contrasts with the earthly Jerusalem. And this heavenly Jerusalem represents the spiritual city of God where the saints reside in Revelation 21 describes them as descending from heaven. Hebrews 1222 to 24 also point to the spiritual Jerusalem, emphasizing that believers have come to Mount Zion into the city of living god, the living, sorry, the heavenly Jerusalem. And so when you also understand this sort of like in the context of and I’ve talked about this on previous episodes, you know, what Galatians 34, Romans 9 through 11, which, and, and Galatians 6, which, which really hammer in this idea that Israel is not a physical nation. It’s not through the flesh, but it’s always been those of faith and that Jesus is the true Israel, which was the point of the prophecy that Matthew speaks of when it says out of Egypt, I called my son. It’s such an important point to this. Right? Because he’s quoting out of Hosea 11 through 13, which doesn’t make sense at first glance because Hosea 11 through 13 is not really a prophecy about the Messiah.

Jacob Winograd [00:47:26]:
It’s talking about Israel, how God called Israel out of Egypt to be a royal priesthood, to be in communion with God and to be a blessing to the world and to obey him. And that at every turn, God loved them and gave them mercy and called them to fulfill their calling. And at every turn they failed. And so now judgment’s called to come upon them. But then you, you, you now, now you’ve fast forward to the Christ. Well, he is the true Israel because he, and this is the point when he Matthew’s pointing back to Jose 11 through 13, is that Jesus is gonna walk the same journey of coming out of Egypt, being tempted through trials in the in the desert, and then being called to become a royal priest. And he redeems the nation. He succeeds in every area that Israel fails and actually is the true Israel because the covenant of works, no one could live up to except for Christ.

Jacob Winograd [00:48:20]:
And so this is then, you know, describing Galatians 3, 3, and 4. And, you know, and then Jesus referred to the Israel of God and, and, and Galatians 6, but we become, you know, inheritors of the promises and the covenant of Abraham through Christ, who is the, as talked about in those passages. And, and this is further backed up in like Romans 9 through 11. You know, he is the, the, the, the true offspring of Abraham. It’s those of faith who are United with Christ. And so this all, you know, also goes to support this idea that Jerusalem doesn’t just necessarily like that doesn’t we should not necessarily immediately assume that references to Israel or Jerusalem are always gonna be talking about physical Israel or Jerusalem. In Zechariah 49, it says that the Lord will be king over all the earth. And on that day, the Lord will be 1 and his name 1.

Jacob Winograd [00:49:16]:
This verse, when read in the context of the new testament, speaks to the present reality of Christ’s reign rather than a future political dominion. In Matthew 28, after his resurrection, Jesus proclaims all authority in heaven and all on earth has been given to me. And so this this signifies that Christ is currently reigning as king and his authority is extending over all the earth. The new Testament consistently portrays the kingdom of God as a present spiritual reality inaugurated by Jesus’ first coming and progressively advancing through the church. Colossians 113 through 14 tells us that god has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. We are already participants in Christ’s kingdom and living under his sovereign rule. The worship described in Zechariah 1416, which involves the celebration of the feast of the booths, further supports the spiritual interpretation. Jesus in his conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 423 to 24 re he reframes the understanding of worship.

Jacob Winograd [00:50:31]:
You know, he said it’s not about going to the right place to worship, but he says the hour is coming where true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth for the father is seeking such people to worship him. And this teaching emphasizes that true worship will no longer be confined to a specific location like a temple in Jerusalem or bound to old testament rituals, but is now fulfilled in the spiritual worship of God through Christ wherever his followers may be. So what does this all mean? Well, what I would say here is that in light of all these points, the amillennial interpretation of Zechariah 14 provides a a not just a more coherent and more theologically consistent, but it’s a more compelling understanding of this of this passage that aligns with the overall narrative of scripture. By viewing this prophecy through the fulfillment hermeneutic, we see that all this vivid imagery and description find their true meaning in the spiritual realities inaugurated by Christ’s first coming, which will be, yes, culminated in his final coming. The living waters symbolize the life giving spirit of God and the universal reign of God is already present in the spiritual reign of Christ, who is currently enthroned in the heart of believers. And true worship is no longer tied to a physical location. And rather than seeing this as a future event involving a physical temple and a geographical over Jerusalem, that’s to overlook the profound spiritual fulfillment that has already been realized in Jesus Christ and his new covenant. Jesus is, you know, has made it so that we don’t have to worship in a temple.

Jacob Winograd [00:52:19]:
We don’t have a veil separating us. The veil has been torn. We are now free to worship in spirit and truth and to come before the father. 1st Peter 2 5 talks about how we are living stones being built into a spiritual house. And so looking to this passage as describing the rebuilding of a temple rather than describing the building of the church and how the church will, you know, has expanded and continues to expand and brings the gospel to the world. And in so doing that makes the spiritual reality of Christ’s reign eventually culminate in that physical reality. But that’s not in a, to mean that I’m saying the post millennials are right either, because I’m not saying that that rain is gonna be physical. I’m saying it’s in the hearts of believers and that the, the gospel message goes out to all the nations and to all the people.

Jacob Winograd [00:53:20]:
And that all those who are called by God receive that message and become one with the body of Christ. And that it is a, you know, that the church is global and also cosmic too. It’s global in an earthly sense and cosmic in that we are one with Christ in this already, present universal spiritual heavenly reign. And so I think that’s a good place to kind of wrap this up for this time. Again, there’s, there’s more arguments that I wanna get into. There’s even more I could get into involving Zechariah there. I have more notes on that passage, but that’s sort of an overview of contrasting, comparing and contrasting a literalist interpretation of one of these prophecies with a fulfillment hermeneutic, which I think, again, just more consistent and and more compelling. Remember the repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Jacob Winograd [00:54:26]:
And I think this just is a more this approach aligns the new testament, the old testament, and aligns with the hearts of believers to live in the reality of Christ’s current reign. So that’s all I have for this week’s episode. And for next week’s episode, we’re going to dive more, I think, into, I have a lot on, you know, not just Zechariah 14. There’s a lot of prophecies and passages in the old Testament pointing to the future kingdom, pointing to the new covenant. And so I think next episode we’ll dive more into those passages because again, we wanna see unity here. If, if, if my interpretation here was like, well, that makes sense, but then all these other passages, those don’t fit. Well, then we’d have a problem, but we we should and be careful not to perform my eyes to Jesus here and be careful not to be acting like we’re reinventing the wheel, but that’s why I’m quoting Sproul and I’m quoting Oregon. I’m quoting Augustine.

Jacob Winograd [00:55:27]:
I have many more church fathers to quote from here because this isn’t a novel idea. This is rather a, it’s a progressive revelation, but it’s not undoing what was already known. It’s a revelation that even the earliest Christians understood and it’s just been built upon. And we’ve grown in our understanding. And, and I would say now our job is to continue to further embrace our role as the church to be that prophetic witness to the world and to call them into out of that like, I love that Colossians passage. We’re called out of the domain of darkness and into Christ’s kingdom. And that’s what we get to proclaim to the entire world. So that’s all I have for you guys on today’s episode.

Jacob Winograd [00:56:15]:
I hope you enjoyed it. I hope that made sense. Again, quasi prepared quasi kind of doing this extemporaneously because it’s, there’s just a lot there to try to get out and do it in somewhat a succinct way that still ended up being an hour. But I appreciate you guys listening.

Jacob Winograd [00:56:32]:
Let me know what

Jacob Winograd [00:56:33]:
you think in the comments. Give me any feedback you want, even if you disagree. That’s fine. I’m always happy to interact with those who disagree with me, even have them on my show many times. But I think this is a a really exciting way to enhance our our faith to realize that we’re not waiting for a lot of these things to happen. We’re living in the moment in the kingdom of God. So, like, I always I’ll end on this.

Jacob Winograd [00:56:56]:
As I always say, live

Jacob Winograd [00:56:58]:
for that present kingdom reality. Live counterculture to the empires of man. Live at peace and live for Christ. Talk to you next week.

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