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Why does Jesus say in Luke 13, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish? And what would be the point of a post-trib rapture? Those are a couple of questions we will look at on Grace in Focus.
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Once again, the website, faithalone.org. Now, with today’s questions and answers, here are Bob Wilkin and Ken Yates.
And Bob, depending on how our time goes on this thing, we either got one or two questions that we’re going to answer. One comes from Matt, and Matt gives us a shout out. Matt is a wise man because he says, I agree with the free grace stance.
I’m believing on Jesus alone for eternal life. That makes you smarter than most people in evangelicalism. So, congratulations on that.
But he says he has a question, and it deals with repentance. And that is a common question that comes up in free grace circles, and specifically, Luke chapter 13, one through five. And he asked if the great Bob Wilkin, the sensei of all senseis, would explain the first five verses there.
And I think even though he doesn’t say it in his question, I think verse five is probably the main point, where the Lord says, I tell you, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
Okay, I covered this in my dissertation. My dissertation at Dallas Seminary was on repentance as a condition for salvation in the New Testament. I found 11 verses that I felt proved that there were some verses, those 11, that said you needed to repent in order to have everlasting life, in order to have an irrevocable salvation.
I saw the salvation is not salvation in this life, but eternal salvation. So, two of those verses were Luke 13.3 and Luke 13.5, which say the same thing. Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
And it’s funny because I remember, Zayn Hajjah was my first reader, that you call that the advisor. And I was meeting with him, and he said, you know, on this Luke 13 passage, I think that verses 3 and 5 most naturally refer to 70 AD, when at the end of the Jewish war, Rome destroyed Jerusalem, Rome killed over a million Jews, and there was widespread perishing in Israel. And Israel stopped being a nation until 1948.
And he said, why isn’t that right? And I was like, no, I don’t see that.
You didn’t buy it.
I didn’t buy it.
Or maybe because you’ve already done all your work on your dissertation, you want to go back and redo it.
Yeah, I don’t want to rewrite that.
I busted on the sensei.
There you go. So fast forward to about the year 1990, and Zane Hodges had written his book absolutely free, and it was a reply to Lordship Salvation and John MacArthur’s The Gospel According to Jesus. And he had Chapter 12 was on repentance.
And he said repentance is not a condition of eternal life.
Even in those 11 verses that you…
Even in those 11 verses. So at our board meeting, one of the board members had written an appendix for that book. And he said, Zane, if you don’t pull that chapter from the book, I’m pulling my appendix.
And he had an appendix on proving that Lordship Salvation was not the historic position of the Church, which I’m not so sure of. I think it probably was the historic position. Maybe I have a…
Arminianism, I think, were more likely right in the historic position of the early Church.
But that’s still a form of Lordship Salvation. But yeah, if you mean reformed Lordship Salvation, no, that wasn’t the historic position. But Arminian Lordship Salvation was.
Sure, that you could lose your salvation at the drop of a hat.
But anyway, seven of the other eight guys were all DTS grads and all contemporaries of mine. They all thought Zane was wrong. And I said, you know what?
I’m not convinced, but I think he makes a persuasive argument when he says the Gospel of John doesn’t mention repentance and the Gospel of John explains how a person is born again. It’s written to unbelievers that they might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing, they might have life in His name. John 20, 31.
So I prayed about it and thought about it and meditated on it for about seven years. And finally, by 1997, seven years later, all 11 verses had fallen away, including these. And you know what the key word in Luke 13, 3 and 5…
Let me guess. Likewise.
Yeah. Why is that the key word?
Because the examples he gives, they die physically.
Okay, give me… What two examples does the Lord give?
He gives the examples of Galileans who were killed because of their sacrifices, and then he gives…
Killed by Pilate.
By Pilate. So they died physically. And then a tower…
And we’re not told whether they’re born again or not.
They may have been believers, they may not have been believers. Right.
Or a mix and match. Who knows?
Right.
But the Lord isn’t making any point about their eternal destiny.
Right. And then the second example is a tower that falls on some people and kills them.
This tower in Solemn kills, what, 18 people, I think?
Yeah, 18 people.
And they die. And we’re not saying anything about, did they go to heaven or did they go to hell? Nobody went to heaven back then, because prior to Jesus’ ascension, they all went to the safe part of Sheol or Hades.
But they would have been with Abraham in the air-conditioned part, the good part. And then, of course, when Jesus ascended to heaven, they would have gone with him. But the issue is not whether they were born again or not.
The issue is they died.
Yeah. And that is probably the most important thing to see in this passage.
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If we’re just going to say, hey, look, I don’t know what’s going on here. What is this repentance? To see that the perishing here is not being cast in the lake of fire.
And by the way, I have a book called Turn and Live the Power of Repentance. And I take Turn and Live from Ezekiel 18. And what it says is, if a wicked person turns from his wickedness, he will live.
And if a righteous person turns from his righteousness, he will die. And so it’s saying turn and live. The point is, all through the Old and New Testament, repentance is the remedy for physical death.
If you’re on the path of death, which is what Proverbs calls wickedness, then you can escape that path and extend your life by repenting.
And by the way, this is for believers, too, in Proverbs.
Believers or unbelievers.
That’s right.
Well, even Luke 13, 1-5, unless we as believers walk in the light, we are going to die prematurely.
In Luke 13, since you’ve obviously done a lot of work on this, would you see this specifically as talking to the nation of Israel in AD 70?
Oh, absolutely.
That he’s telling the nation, if you all as a nation don’t repent, this is what’s coming upon you.
Here’s the problem I had. I remember I told Zane this. I said, okay, a million Jews died in AD 70.
But he says you will all likewise perish. And so it wasn’t a 100% of them that died prematurely. Some of them survived.
What I came to see later is oftentimes the word all is used of the greater part. Like everyone went out to hear John the Baptist.
All of the city was gathered at the door to hear Jesus teach.
And that doesn’t mean 100%. It just means there was a massive crowd. All sometimes means all, and all sometimes means many, and the context tells you which one it is.
And here I would say the context is clear that he wasn’t saying 100% of the Jews were going to likewise die physically. What he was saying is there was going to be massive death and destruction. Now it’s possible, I don’t think so, but it’s possible that Jesus is saying the actual people who were hearing him then were all going to die.
Not 100% of the people of the nation, but the actual people who he was talking to. I think all he meant was this was going to be widespread death and destruction. And we don’t know what the population of Israel was at this point, somewhere like 2, 3, 4 million.
If a million died, that’s a huge percentage. If it’s 2 million people, that’s half the population.
Right. And we use that phrase. And when we talk about war, when we say all of the city was destroyed.
Well, no, there was probably some few buildings left or something like that. Matt, we hope that is helpful for you. And in the last couple of minutes we got left, Bob and I particularly left this one alone because we have questions ourselves.
Doug asked a question. He says something, and I’m going to take him at his word. I got to admit, Doug, you know more than I about this.
He says that the position of the post-tribulation rapture is gaining popularity. And he says, especially among Baptists. And obviously the post-tribulation rapture is that the church will go through the tribulation, then be raptured immediately before the Lord returns.
And we go away with him and we come right back, instead of being with him for the seven years of the tribulation period. And he basically wants to know what would be the purpose of that. I know that part of it would be people want to say that the church needs to go through the purifying fires of the tribulation, that this is God’s going to purify the church to himself, the Lord is.
So we need to go through the tribulation. But Doug’s question is more, well, why would he take us to himself and then immediately a minute later we return with him?
Yeah, and I would agree with Doug. Now we know from 1 Thessalonians 5 the Lord has not appointed us for wrath and he’s talking about the tribulation wrath. You can see that from 1 Thess 4, 13 through 18 and 1 Thess 5, 1 to 11.
So we’re not going to go through that wrath. But I think the post-trib rapture position is kind of weird, because okay, is this after or before Armageddon? If it’s after Armageddon, Jesus has already returned.
So it’s got to be before. If we’re going to return with him.
It would seem like unless the rapture means, we kind of, well, then we wouldn’t meet him in the air, would we? We would meet him on the earth. So yeah, it would have to be before Armageddon.
But then, isn’t Armageddon part of the tribulation?
Part of the wrath.
Part of the wrath? Or are you saying that Armageddon is actually after? I don’t know their position.
My guess is that some of them would say, we’re raptured right before Armageddon, and we get to be with him as he defeats his enemies before he sets up his kingdom or something like that. I’m just guessing.
But then that wouldn’t be quite post-trip. That would be post most of the trip.
Yeah, which kind of leans into that view of pre-wrath tribulation that you hear about.
In my other view, the first four or five years of the tribulation is not really wrath.
Right.
It’s only the last two or two and a half years of its wrath.
Maybe before the bowls are poured out or Armageddon. But Doug, go to 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5. We’re going to miss the tribulation and 1 Thessalonians 1.10.
So, well, we appreciate both Doug and Matt’s question. And remember, guys, keep Grace in Focus.
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The preceding has been a listener-supported ministry from the Grace Evangelical Society.
