Foolishness: “I consider debating to be a total waste of time.”
Wisdom: “The first to state his case seems right, until his opponent begins to cross-examine him.” Proverbs 18:17
If the two-page, surface-level, inaccurate article that Reagan wrote against Pre-wrath recently is any reflection of what his competency would be like in a debate, it is understandable why he refused. As we learned this past week, David Reagan has rebuffed my offer to have meaningful interaction in a public format. He considers this interaction “a total waste of time.” He is wrong, and every truth-lover should be offended by such a claim.
Debate is simply an orderly exchange of ideas in which each person receives the same fair amount of time to present their case. It includes meaningful interaction in cross-examination in which theological positions are held accountable; i.e., assumptions, inconsistencies, and false claims cannot go unchallenged as they often do in print. There is only one conclusion that someone must come to if they think that this meaningful interaction is a waste of time: They want their assertions to be immune from examination. They do not want to be seriously challenged.
The most effective format for two individuals with opposing views is not behind a keyboard or a book, but a public debate each having the same amount of time periods of an opening, rebuttals, cross-examination, and closing. And you cannot have a real debate without cross-examination; it is the soul of the debate. Otherwise, all you will really have is two monologues, not a dialogue. Further, the moderator is very important to a debate in managing and enforcing the protocol. If a debate functions as such, I believe that God’s people are edified by witnessing a genuine engagement and accountability between theological perspectives. And most of all, God is glorified in this effective manner of communication that seeks after Biblical truth.
[Update on the Debate]
In this article, pretribulational teacher David R. Reagan facilely describes the prewrath rapture, which was not all together accurate. He responds to the Prewrath rapture by attempting to refute the Prewrath rapture interpretation that the seals are not God’s wrath. Further, he does not recognize the Biblical distinction between the Antichrist’s Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord’s wrath.
David Reagan, like so many other pretribulational teachers, accepts the common flaws of his system without being seriously challenged. Accordingly, I challenge Dr. Reagan to a public moderated debate with copious amounts of cross-examination. He has made claims against the Prewrath view that are demonstrably false. I am challenging him to defend those claims in public, in a debate. I am willing to defend the Prewrath position under cross-examination by Reagan. Is he willing to do the same with his own convictions?
Given that pretribulationism is losing numerous adherents every year to the prewrath side, I would think that pretrib teachers would jump at the chance to debate a prewrather in public and show for everyone, once and for all, why prewrath is wrong. Oddly, this does not happen. Why am I doing this? It is not like David Reagan has anything to lose since it is pretribbers coming over to the Prewrath side. The reason is that I am confident that when Pretribulationism and Prewrath have the opportunity to be set side by side, most people will see the truthfulness in the Prewrath position, not pretribulationism. Why do you think that in the past 20 years, pretribbers are so averse to have their position examined publicly by a prewrather?
I believe that this debate would be beneficial for God’s people since two theological positions are held accountable; i.e., assumptions and false claims cannot go unchallenged as they often do in print.
“The first to state his case seems right, until his opponent begins to cross-examine him.” Proverbs 18:17
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What Did the Early Church Fathers Teach on the Timing of the Second Coming?
This presentation on what the early church taught was given last October in O’Fallon Missouri at an eschatology forum. There are three speakers who had twenty minutes each to give their case: Steve Gregg (Preterist), Charles Cooper (Prewrath), Thomas Ice (Pretribulational).
I have included Steve Gregg’s presentation because I want you to hear what a preterist case sounds like. It goes something like this:
“Ok, I grudgingly admit that preterism was never taught in the first three hundred years by a Church Father. But who knows!…maybe one day someone may stumble upon in the sands of Egypt an early Church document with preterist teachings, so therefore we can never be too sure what the early Church taught on this subject.”
What Gregg also does is he invokes sparse preterist writings from the Church Fathers from AD 300-700 to cast doubt on what the early Church taught, as if they have the same weight as futurist writings from the first and second generations of the Church!
In the second presentation, Cooper demonstrates that the early Church clearly taught that the Church would encounter the Antichrist’s Great Tribulation. Cooper even cites in support the authoritative church historian Larry V. Crutchfield, who, himself is a pretribulationalist!
In the third presentation, Ice focuses on the premillennial issue. Prewrath is premillennial as well so we can agree with Ice’s points on that issue.
However, Ice makes a false claim by asserting that the early Church Fathers believed in imminency. They certainly did not believe in imminency in the pretribulational sense that the Church would be raptured before the Antichrist’s Great Tribulation. And some believed that the Church would be raptured soon because they thought that they were in the midst of the Great Tribulation! So Ice’s statements are misleading and incorrect.
The only early citation that Ice attempts to produce is a statement from The Shepherd of Hermas, in which he reads his pretribulational system into this ancient document. He (selectively) cites a statement from Vision 4 that says that if someone has enough faith they can escape a great tribulation. What Ice does is anachronistically reads “escape” as a rapture. But there is nothing in the text that suggests a rapture. In fact, the “escape” in that context indicates a physical escape leaving the person on earth (see Vision 4:2). Nor does Hermas place the Return of Christ before the Great Tribulation. Further, Hermas actually makes statements of enduring the Great Tribulation:
“Blessed are those of you who patiently endure the coming great tribulation and who will not deny their life.” (Vision 2:2)
“Therefore those who endure and pass through the flames will be purified by them…The white part is the age to come, in which God’s elect will live because those chosen by God for eternal life will be spotless and pure…You have also the foreshadowing of the great tribulation that is coming” (Vision 4:3)
It should also be mentioned that like so many of the other early Church Fathers’ exposition of Scripture, this document instead is not didactic intending to interpret what the Bible teaches on the Second Coming — it is part of a vision. The fact that this is the only citation that Ice can produce within the first four hundred years of Church History is very telling.
Ice also invokes a later Church document called Pseudo-Ephraem and purports that there are pretrib statements. This has been thoroughly refuted in this Parousia Newsletter.
In summary, the term “Prewrath” is new, but its essential teaching goes back to the early Church writers, contra preterism, pretribulationism, and amillennialism.
Download as MP3
This week on Gary DeMar’s radio program he responded to the Prewrath position, briefly. For those who do not know Gary DeMar, he is a preterist author and teacher. Listening to his comments on the Prewrath position, I found them surface-level at best. Basically, his conclusion was: since Prewrath shares a futurist approach to Matthew 24 along with pretribulationism, prewrath does not have any new critiques for the preterist position.
He also claims that Prewrath does not have good scholarly exegesis that would critique preterism as well as support prewrath. I find this odd since it has been over a year now that Charles Cooper’s book has been published, God’s Elect and the Great Tribulation: An Interpretation of Matthew 24:1-31 and Daniel 9. This book is a solid, scholarly book that not only supports prewrath but has substantive critiques against preterism, some critiques that I am sure Gary DeMar is not even aware of. So I would challenge DeMar to read the book and respond to it.
Moreover, Gary DeMar in his show laments that premillennialist teachers are not eager to debate or interact with preterists. I will give DeMar the benefit of the doubt here since he is mostly (if not exclusively) exposed to pretrib premillennialists.
DeMar has debated pretrib teacher Thomas Ice for example, and I have heard this debate, which I was left shaking my head since I was not impressed by either of them. (Incidentally, Thomas Ice will not defend his pretribulationism in debate with a prewrath teacher, but he will with a preterist. That should tell you something.)
I am writing a couple of books right now and my second book is specifically on a refutation of preterism. Would it not be fitting that once that book is published there could be a public debate with DeMar with copious amounts of cross-examination? I think so. And I am sure Cooper would desire to defend his exegesis in his book in a debate with a preterist.
One of the radio programs that DeMar comments on the Prewrath, he gave his garden-variety preterist arguments to Matthew 24: “This generation,” the second-person “you,” the term “Antichrist” is not mentioned, etc., etc. He also gives the impression that “we preterists are scholarly, and you premillers over there are just ‘popular.'”
I was at a conference in Florida earlier this year where I met DeMar briefly, unrelated to eschatology, but he had a booth in which I bought several preterist books that I have been wanting to read for a while. I was disappointed by these preterist books since they did not provide much meaningful exegesis. And some of the salient issues that should have been discussed were completely ignored such as distinct purposes of the gospel writers for the Olivet Discourse (Preterists just assume that the writers had one purpose).
Again, I give DeMar the benefit of the doubt since he has been exposed all his life to sensational-popular, surface-level pretrib teachers who are not interested in meaningful interaction. But there is a new kid in town, the prewrath position, a kid who is much more sober about the Biblical text and seeks to be exegetically faithful to Scripture.
Rapture Debate Held on October 9, 1999 at Irving Bible Church, Irving, Texas. About 600-700 in Attendance. Moderator: Kirby Anderson.
My observations about the debate are below. But if I were to sum up the debate right now, I would say: Send it to all of your pretrib friends!
This is the first time that this Rapture debate has been made available on the internet. The following are the four parts of the debate with a rebuttal period following after each one. Click here to be taken to the audio files.
Part 1: Pretribulationism – Mal Couch and Yaacov Ramsel
Part 2: Prewrath – Charles Cooper and Roger Best
Part 3: Postribulationism – Ken Kline and Monte Judah
Part 4: Question & Answer
A few of my observations from the debate:
1. Mal Couch’s pretrib presentation was actually not a presentation at all. He made assertions about Matthew 24 but with no support to back up his assertions, except for an odd reference to Deuteronomy, which Roger Best pointed out the inconsistency.
Further, rather than Couch arguing for his position during his time to do so, he became fixated on personalities such as Van Kampen and Rosenthal. There is a reason why pretribs cannot make a positive presentation of their view: there simply are not any Biblical texts that teach that the rapture happens before the Antichrist’s Great Tribulation. And therefore, their recourse is to argue against other positions, as if that is a meaningful argument for their own view.
2. After Charles Cooper gave his excellent Prewrath presentation, it was time for the rebuttal from the others. Mal Couch was the first to respond. Would he respond Biblically and rebut (hence, rebuttal period) the points that Cooper made in his presentation? Nope. He completely blundered. As is consistent in pretribulational books writing against prewrath, Couch would make a personal attack on Cooper with his very first remark saying something along the lines of he would make a good salesman.
Immediately after this ad hominem from Couch, he began to respond in a conspicuous almost angry-hostile manner. It was obvious that the success of Cooper’s presentation and the positive effect it had on the audience put Couch in this posture. At this point, in my opinion, the debate was over. But there was more.
3. In the Part 3 post-trib presentation the speaker began saying, “I am not so much post-trib as I am prewrath“! Wow…I knew that prewrath and postrib had affinities, but this was great to hear.
4. Further, in the Post-trib rebuttal, Cooper pointed out some important inconsistencies within the Postrib view concerning the sheep and goats judgment and their timing of the rapture. In addition, toward the end of this rebuttal Cooper corrected the Pretrib Mal Couch on his errors by demonstrating that the Day of the Lord’s wrath indeed is announced by the sixth seal cosmic disturbances.
5. After the debate was over, Mal Couch unhappily exited the building choosing not to take questions–and Charles Cooper and Roger Best received applause and a warm welcome after the debate with people gathering around them wanting to learn more about the Prewrath position (including the post-trib participant!).
6. I am convinced that when the Prewrath and Pretrib position is examined side-by-side, or they are cross-examined in a public moderated debate, the Prewrath will be shown to be the Biblical position.
Though I am not a big fan of multiple party debates, and though there was no formal cross-examination in this debate, I thought it went well given the amount of time with some important points that Cooper and Best made in support of key Prewrath issues. In addition, I was pleased to listen to them demonstrate inconsistencies in the opposing views, in particular the Pretrib position.
That said, I believe though the most effective format for debate are two individuals with opposing views each having time periods of an opening, rebuttals, cross-examination, and closing. Just to emphasize, you cannot have a real debate without cross-examination; it is the soul of the debate. Otherwise, all you will really have is two monologues, not a dialogue. Further, the moderator is very important to a debate in managaing and enforcing the protocol. If a debate functions as such, I believe that God’s people are edified by witnessing a genuine engagment and accountability between theological perspectives. And most of all, God is glorified in this effective manner of communication and seeking Biblical truth.
We have contacted and challenged national noted pretrib speakers such as Thomas Ice, Dave Hunt, and others, but they have all turned down the challenge to defend their position under cross-examination in a public moderated debate.