How to Live Wisely in the End Times
00:00:00.000 | Well, we are living in the end times. We are living in the final chapter of redemptive
00:00:10.200 | history according to scripture because Christ was the first fruit from the dead. See 1 Corinthians
00:00:16.280 | chapter 15. The new creation has now broken into the old creation. And to talk about this
00:00:23.120 | theme in this episode, we have a question today about a theologian named George Eldon
00:00:28.920 | Ladd, who was born in 1911 and died in 1982 at the age of 71. The question comes to us
00:00:37.040 | from a listener named Matthew. Dear Pastor John, I've been reading a lot of books recently
00:00:41.160 | by a professor from Fuller Seminary I'm sure you're familiar with, Dr. George Eldon Ladd.
00:00:46.360 | I'm intrigued by his writings, but I don't know what to make of his theological leanings,
00:00:51.560 | whether or not he is an evangelical. What is your opinion on Ladd? Did you ever have
00:00:56.000 | him as a professor, and how did he shape your theology today?
00:01:00.920 | Well I totally did not expect a question like this, and I'm so happy to have it. Because
00:01:06.800 | I don't hesitate, Matthew, to say that I'm thrilled that you are reading George Ladd.
00:01:13.560 | I really am. I knew George Ladd personally as my professor in the days when I was at
00:01:19.240 | Fuller Seminary from '68 to '71. That's a previous century. That's 1968 to '71. I took
00:01:28.480 | his basic course on New Testament theology, which became that book New Testament Theology,
00:01:32.680 | and was in his home for discussion at least once. He was, as many evangelicals were back
00:01:39.600 | in those days, a kind of broken man with many personal flaws, but I had an affection for
00:01:48.240 | him, still do, because of what he taught me. I totally regard him as an evangelical. In
00:01:55.400 | fact, I would say he was a conservative evangelical, and one who would affirm all the so-called
00:02:02.840 | fundamentals of the faith, even though he himself would not want to be called a fundamentalist.
00:02:11.000 | He was what was being called in those days neo-evangelicals, who were trying to distance
00:02:17.080 | themselves from fundamentalism in the sense of engaging with frontline Christian scholarship
00:02:22.160 | and cultural involvement. What I mean when I call him an evangelical, just to put clear
00:02:32.040 | meat on the bones, is, number one, he believed in the inerrancy of the Bible, he believed
00:02:39.480 | in the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross, where God actually propitiated His
00:02:44.280 | own wrath against sinners so that we could be justified by faith alone. He believed in
00:02:50.120 | the necessity of hearing the gospel in order to be saved, and that people must be born
00:02:57.600 | again in order to escape hell, which was real and conscious eternal torment. He believed
00:03:04.360 | in the necessity of good works as a demonstration of faith, and the necessity of preaching the
00:03:09.960 | gospel to all the nations so that they'd have a chance to believe and be saved. I know
00:03:14.280 | personally he believed all of those things. So let me just mention a few other things
00:03:20.320 | about him so that you can get your bearings as you read and know what you're in for,
00:03:27.400 | or what the wider perspective is on some of the things you're seeing, maybe. Ladd's
00:03:32.320 | book, which bears the present title "The Presence of the Future," used to be called
00:03:37.880 | "Jesus and the Kingdom." When it first came out and I read it, it was called "Jesus
00:03:41.480 | and the Kingdom." That book, in answer to your question, "What Kind of Influence?"
00:03:46.440 | was a path-breaking book to describe the pervasive nature of eschatology in the New Testament.
00:03:55.000 | What I mean by that is that eschatology is not simply what happens in the future at the
00:04:03.080 | end of the age, but since Christ, the Messiah expected for the end of the age, has come
00:04:11.960 | and has broken into the present age, brought the kingdom of God to the present, he brought
00:04:19.680 | the future into the present so that all of life is eschatological. The future is here,
00:04:29.720 | because the present participates in the already of the kingdom, but the not yet of the consummation.
00:04:39.000 | That's the paradigm that has shaped virtually everybody in biblical studies in the last
00:04:44.480 | 50 years. He wasn't the only one who spoke it, but I think he was one of the decisive
00:04:49.360 | voices for creating that kind of mindset that is virtually in every seminary in the country.
00:04:56.880 | Everybody talks in terms of the already of the kingdom and the not yet of the kingdom,
00:05:03.240 | which is absolutely right to talk about.
00:05:07.000 | Here's a second thing. Ladd wrote a very important book called The New Testament and Criticism,
00:05:15.360 | in which he tried to show how an evangelical can make a judicious use of contemporary critical
00:05:21.160 | methods of Bible study without undermining the doctrine of inerrancy. Third, Ladd was
00:05:29.520 | perhaps best known among conservatives because of his strong affirmation of premillennial
00:05:38.360 | eschatology and post-tribulational return of Christ. In other words, he did not believe
00:05:47.420 | that the church would be raptured out of the world, followed then by a period of tribulation,
00:05:57.240 | followed by the second coming. Rather, he believed that the next major event on God's
00:06:05.080 | eschatological calendar, after the revealing of the man of sin and 2 Thessalonians 2 and
00:06:11.800 | a great period of tribulation, that the next big thing is the second coming, when Jesus
00:06:18.560 | would establish his earthly millennial kingdom for a thousand years, after which Satan would
00:06:23.480 | be released, there would be a great final battle, and then the inauguration of the final
00:06:27.680 | state of the new heavens and the new earth. This is now called—has been called, anyway,
00:06:32.840 | for years—historic premillennialism. And I found the arguments compelling in those
00:06:38.400 | days, and as I've tried to continue to weigh them, I still find them compelling, so I'd
00:06:43.400 | be happy to be a Ladd-like premillennialist today. I could wish—one more thing—I could
00:06:52.040 | wish that every believer today—we're talking, what, how many years since he passed away?
00:06:57.280 | Fifty-plus years, maybe? I can't remember when he passed away. I could wish that every
00:07:01.840 | believer would read his New Testament theology. Oh, what a wonderful education would lie in
00:07:12.680 | store for the person willing to put in the effort. And it's not too demanding. If you
00:07:18.000 | can read Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, you can read Ladd's New Testament theology.
00:07:23.840 | It does not presume Greek and Hebrew. So I think Ladd's New Testament theology is accessible,
00:07:32.840 | and I congratulate you on discovering this man who flourished in the middle of the 20th
00:07:37.840 | century, and I think the Church needs his teaching today.
00:07:41.640 | Well, that is high applause. Wow. Thank you, Pastor John, for going back into your history
00:07:47.680 | and sharing that with us, and thank you for listening and making the podcast a part of
00:07:52.160 | your week. You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our
00:07:55.720 | archive and even reach us by email with a question of your own, even questions that
00:07:59.320 | relate to authors and books and folks who have influenced Pastor John in the past. You
00:08:04.600 | can do all of that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:08:11.160 | We are going to return on Friday, and I think, if I remember correctly, it's a Bible reading
00:08:16.520 | question from a very busy man with a job and a wife and kids who has such a limited time
00:08:21.680 | in the Word each day. He wants to know if there are any shortcuts to Bible reading and
00:08:26.080 | how deep you must go each day to benefit from reading. It's a really good question for busy
00:08:32.160 | dads. It's a really good question for busy moms. It's a really good question for busy
00:08:35.840 | students. Anybody who feels the time crunch on their Bible reading, it's going to be,
00:08:40.680 | I believe, an important discussion. That is on Friday, I think. It's coming up. At some
00:08:47.360 | point that question is coming up. I think it's on Friday. Until then, I'm your host,
00:08:51.000 | Tony Reiki. Whatever's on Friday, I'll see you then.
00:08:53.840 | [END]
00:08:54.340 | 1. What are some of the shortcuts to Bible reading?
00:08:55.340 | 2. What are some of the shortcuts to Bible reading?
00:08:56.340 | 3. What are some of the shortcuts to Bible reading?
00:08:57.340 | 4. What are some of the shortcuts to Bible reading?
00:08:58.340 | 5. What are some of the shortcuts to Bible reading?
00:08:59.340 | 6. What are some of the shortcuts to Bible reading?
00:09:00.340 | 7. What are some of the shortcuts to Bible reading?
00:09:01.340 | 8. What are some of the shortcuts to Bible reading?
00:09:02.340 | 9. What are some of the shortcuts to Bible reading?