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FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE There were about 260 in attendance for the debate, held in the Faith Missionary Church here in Indianapolis. There were at least 15 Preterists and several partial preterists in attendance. Ron Wilson and I sat right up front on the front row. John Noē had a well-prepared and rehearsed presentation, and presented it almost flawlessly. He was more than adequately prepared. His only problem was deciding what to leave out in order to stay within the time limitations. He stuck with his plan and did not let Tommy Ice distract him off course. Noē pre-empted Tommy's smear-campaign on the resurrection. We suspected Tommy would try to paint us heretical on that. Sure enough he tried, but John had already stated in his opening remarks that we do not deny the physical resurrection of Christ nor the bodily resurrection of believers. That really scored some points with the audience when Tommy got up and tried to accuse us of denying the bodily resurrection. John Noē shook his head "no" and then in his second speech John held up his new book (Shattering the Left Behind Delusion) and said to just read this and it will show that we do not deny the bodily resurrection. That was effective. It made Tommy look ill-prepared and mean-spirited for trying to paint John Noē as a heretic. John stated up front that he accepted Tommy as a fellow Christian, but Tommy left the clear impression that he did not believe John was orthodox at all, and appealed to John to please repent and come back to the Orthodox faith. That did not set well with the folks who were here tonight. It was a bad reflection on Tommy and made folks a little more tolerant of John. John's gentlemanly and gracious attitude during the 90 minutes of debate was a real plus. John had a great presentation which pointed out several weaknesses of the Premil position, as well as hammered the Liberal-Skeptic attack and the Preterist view of the TIME statements. It was effective. I could tell a few of the folks there were unsure what to do with this dilemma. Hopefully they will take a deeper look at the Preterist view. We are having some good interaction with them at our book table. Overall, the audience was heavily weighted Premil Pretrib Dispensational. But there were partial preterists who came up afterwards to voice their appreciation for John and their disappointment in Tommy's lack of Christian graciousness. I give John an A+ in "graciousness" and Christian character. He was a 100% Christian gentleman. He was the clear winner in that category. Tommy wasn't even close. And that is a very important perceptual element in a debate. In the area of "razzle-dazzle" I would have to give Tommy the A+. His PowerPoint presentation was well-done. He definitely made himself look like a professional presenter. But in the scripture-documentation department, John Noē came out ahead of Tommy. John kept people in Scripture. That was a real plus. Tommy made some foolish assertions without Biblical support which hurt him, evidently counting on the agreement of the audience to make support unnecessary. That was a wrong assumption on his part. One of these huge mistakes was to assert that Matthew 24 and Luke 21 are dealing with two different events. Ice applied Luke 21 to AD 70, but reserved Matthew 24 for the future. In his "Further On Preterism" workshop the next day at the seminar, Tommy Ice had to engage in incredible amounts of exegetical (really "eisegetical") gymnastics in order to assert his position. Not since Hal Lindsey have I seen such "twisting and distorting" of the Scriptures. Another big bravo goes to John for doing an excellent job of introducing the Preterist view to a couple hundred folks who had never heard of it, or who were aware of it but hostile against it. He did a great job making it simple to grasp so that people see why we are taking a different approach to prophecy than the Premils. Some of those folks will be provoked to study it further and will go on to become Preterists. John DID have some significant impact for good here tonight. I gained a lot of respect and downright appreciation for our dear brother John Noē. I love the man immensely for his excellent preparation and delivery. We owe him a big round of applause for a job well-done. He is a brave, fearless, well-equipped and gentlemanly debater. He adorned the Preterist movement by his good efforts here tonight. I am glad I came. It meant a lot to John to have some of us there with him, and it was a delight to see him defend Biblical Truth. You will want to get the audio and video tapes from it. We have the two audio tapes available now ($12 postpaid). The video tape will NOT be available for a month or two while it is being professionally mastered. Again, for the record -- Well done, John! Anyone who will stick their neck out and debate Tommy Ice in front of a hostile audience deserves an Oscar. John made us look good! A blessing on him and his house. # # # |
Prophecy Reformation Institute |