UPDATE: Here is the debate
I appreciate Dr. Ice for accepting the invitation to debate. Not many pretrib teachers are willing to engage on this level—come to think of it, he is the only one!
I am very pleased with how the debate went. The audio will be posted on this site in a couple of days and the video in a couple of weeks.
This week on The Biblical Prophecy Program™ I will give my full post-debate commentary.
The debate went better than I thought it would. My strategy was to explain the prewrath position clearly and coherently. I believe I accomplished this in my opening remarks as well as my three rebuttal periods. The cross-examination period went excellent. I pressed Dr. Ice on a few points, in particular I challenged him to produce a single document in all of Koine Greek literature where the Greek term apostasia means a “spatial departure,” since he believes apostasia in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 refers to the rapture. He conceded that he was not able to produce a single instance.
In my opinion, his overall response to me in the debate was “prewrath is wrong, because pretrib is right.” I don’t think he had a robust challenge to my biblical argumentation. Whether I made a plausible and biblical case that the church will face the Antichrist before the rapture, the listener will have to make that judgment.
In my closing remarks, I recapped how pretribulationism is based on circular reasoning and flawed presuppositions. I also gave a word of exhortation to the body of Christ that if we are that last generation to face the Antichrist before the Lord’s return, we must spiritually prepare today so we can become overcomers, rather than wait until the Antichrist’s great tribulation and the celestial disturbance event—which will be too late.
Thank you everyone for your prayers and financial support for the debate.
