Chuck Baldwin’s Jesuit Preterism Debunked
My dear friends and readers of this website, it gives me no pleasure at all to write this article. My wife and I like pastor Chuck Baldwin of Liberty Fellowship. For years we used to listen to his weekly messages given at Liberty Fellowship of Kalispell Montana. We gave to his ministry. We like his commentaries on Matthew 24, Romans chapter 13 about government, what he has to say about Zionist Israel, his stand against COVID-19 vaccines, and his stand against the medical mandates during the pandemic. He often quoted from noteworthy Bible commentators of the past, men of God such as Matthew Henry, Albert Barnes, Adam Clarke, John Gill, and the Geneva Bible commentaries. They all taught standard Protestant Historicist interpretation of Bible prophecy. They all pointed to the “man of sin” of Second Thessalonians chapter 2 as the popes of Rome. They all proclaimed the “great whore that sitteth upon many waters”, the woman arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, of Revelation chapter 17 to be the Roman Catholic Church.
We were therefore alarmed and dismayed when in January of 2023, Chuck Baldwin began to teach that the Book of Revelation was written before the destruction of Jerusalem and that all of the prophecies in the Book of Revelation have to do with Jerusalem and its destruction! Folks, this is what Jesuit Luis de Alcazar (1554-1630) of Seville, Spain taught and something the Jesuits would like you to believe!
Alcazar devised what became known as the ‘preterist’ system of prophetic interpretation. This theory proposed that the Book of Revelation deals only with events in the Pagan Roman Empire, that the Antichrist refers to Nero, and that the prophecies were therefore fulfilled long before the time of the medieval church.
Alcazar taught that for the same reason that Francesco Ribera taught the 70th Week of Daniel is a 7-year end-time scenario of the Antichrist in the future, the doctrine which is known as futurism. The reason is both preterism and futurism divert attention and blame away from the Roman Beast and the Whore of Revelation 17, namely the Roman Catholic Church, the popes of Rome, and the Jesuits! And though these two doctrines contradict each other, the Roman Catholic Church put its imprimatur, its official stamp of approval to publish books that teach both these doctrines! Preterism puts the Antichrist in the past, and Futurism puts the Antichrist in the future. Either one of these two doctrines takes Protestant Christians’ eyes off the popes of Rome as the fulfillment of the man of sin prophecy of Second Thessalonians chapter 2. The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t care which one of them you believe, it just wants you to believe one of them.
On January 20, 2023, I wrote the following to one of the members of Liberty Fellowship, a person who lives in Kalispell and who probably sees Chuck Baldwin regularly:
He did not reply to me. He used to reply to all my previous messages to him.
And even before that, in December of 2022, I was shocked when a friend pointed out to me that Pastor Baldwin does not name the Pope as Antichrist which is the true Protestant Reformation historicist position. Now that I think about it, I don’t know if he ever did. What baffles me is how can a man who reads and quotes from good men of God of the 17 and 18th centuries who all taught that the papacy is the office of the Antichrist not teach likewise? Is he under somebody’s influence for the sake of monetary gain?
Today, May 7th, 2024, I came across Chuck Baldwin’s latest message, “Babylon The Great – Part One – The Mother Of Harlots (Prophecy Message #21) – 5/5/24”. I thought, “Great! He’s gonna talk about Revelation chapter 17, a crystal clear picture of the Roman Catholic Church! Let’s see what he has to say.” I told my wife Tess and she eagerly listened to him with me for the first few minutes. Sad to say, he did not point to Rome, the popes, or the Jesuits but talked about Jerusalem instead! Did Jerusalem rule the civilized world and control the kings of Europe for over a thousand years like the Popes of Rome did? Nope.
I mean, how can anyone not see a picture of the Roman Catholic Church in Revelation chapter 17? Not to see it means either ignorance of history or ignoring history, especially Church History.
I found a talk by a pastor named Sam Adams who I believe tells the truth about Chuck Baldwin. He says it better than I can. I transcribed the first 6 1/2 minutes of the YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7FPbKViBcI
Partial transcript of Sam Adam’s message
I’ll be starting today in Revelation chapter one as I bring a follow-up to a message I started a few weeks ago refuting the deceptive and obliging Romanist Doctrine being promoted by Chuck Baldwin via a series of sermons on Bible prophecy that he’s posting online. And this follow-up message is just as crucial for all followers of Chuck Baldwin to hear than the last if not more so.
Baldwin is a somewhat popular public, politician, and pastor of the non-denominational and ecumenical Liberty Fellowship Church in Montana. He does do a good job of exposing some of the evils of Washington DC, but then he blames the wrong cabal or the wrong Puppet Master for those evils.
As I mentioned last time, many of our like-minded friends also follow Chuck Baldwin, some of whom are being deceived by his false teaching, and so I do believe it’s important that we post this expose and refutation of his doctrine online.
I’m going to be covering several passages and providing lots of information in this message so some may need to listen through two or three times while taking notes along the way. I’m going to show in this message how Chuck Baldwin consistently and in every single passage, deals with and focuses on a few select verses while intentionally ignoring the context of those verses so that he can mangle the meaning or the interpretation of the scriptures.
Baldwin uses the King James Bible and he pretends to be a fundamentalist but with the way he mangles and twists the scriptures in this recent sermon series in a way that benefits Rome and his loyal agents that hold the controlling interest over Washington DC, I conclude that Baldwin has finally exposed himself as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
After spending the first 30 years of his ministry preaching the devil’s false multi-gospel anti-Jesus heresies of Scofield’s pre-trib rapture dispensationalism, which system itself was concocted in the 1500s by a Jesuit priest named Francisco Rivera who revived somewhat but also corrupted and perverted the original pre-millennial eschatology of the Apostles and contaminated it with Scofield’s multi-gospel, dual covenant, and pre-trib rapture heresies, Baldwin finally abandoned that heretical system, but then he’s shifting gears to another very blinding perversion of the scripture is known as preterism, which was also concocted by the Jesuits and at about the same time. Baldwin says his eschatology is Jesus-based rather than Israel-based, but much to the contrary as I’ll explain in this message, his eschatology is agenda-driven. It’s an eschatology that spiritualizes and recklessly mangles the scriptures to promote an agenda, which rather than being Jesus-based as he claims, is instead highly Jesuit-based, having been undeniably developed during the Counter-Reformation of the 16th century by another Jesuit priest named Luis de Alcazar, who expanded on the spiritualized view of the Bible first proposed by the Roman Catholic Augustine of Hippo in the 5th Century to produce the first systematic preterist exposition of Bible prophecy, the purpose of which was just like Ribera’s dispensationalism to divert attention from the Roman Catholic papacy, which Luther and the Protestant reformers of that day believed to be the Antichrist.
Here’s a brief quote from the Wikipedia article detailing the history and the development of Baldwin’s preterism.
“Historically, preterists and non-preterists have generally agreed that the Jesuit Luis de Alcazar (1554–1613) wrote the first systematic preterist exposition of prophecy Vestigatio arcani sensus in Apocalypsi, published during the Counter-Reformation. Moses Stuart noted in 1845 that Alcasar’s preterist interpretation advantaged the Roman Catholic Church during its arguments with Protestants. Due to resistance from Protestant historicists, the preterist view was slow to gain acceptance outside the Roman Catholic Church. Among Protestants, preterism was first accepted by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), a Dutch Protestant eager to establish common ground between Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church.”
As I would add Baldwin also appears to be.
So the fact is that both of these systems dispensationalism and preterism were concocted by the Jesuits, and in merely shifting gears from one heresy of the Jesuits to another, Chuck Baldwin is both following and in fact, promoting the doctrine of the new world order globalists that served Rome and who truly control Washington D.C, whom he is aiding and abetting by diverting attention from Rome and blaming Zionist Jews for doing that instead, just as the Jesuits have always used the Jews for their scapegoats.
Baldwin has both denied and avoided calling himself a preterist but in this series especially in part four where he addressed the second Thessalonians chapter 2 and the definition of the term Antichrist in part seven where he covers the date John wrote the book of the Revelation and in part nine where he covers the Seal of judgments in Revelation chapter 6. because he has finally come out stating that the Book of Revelation was primarily fulfilled in the first century with the destruction of Jerusalem, it is therefore correct to label Baldwin as a full-blown preterist. By the preterist position he’s adopted, he is on a mission to convince the world that Bible prophecy is irrelevant and can be ignored, that the events of our day have nothing to do with Bible prophecy since it’s all already been fulfilled in history, and which I suggest poses a danger to all those who hear and become deluded by Baldwin’s message.
And then as further evidence of his Rome-favoring agenda, in his weekly column released a few weeks ago on September 8th Baldwin asserted that Vladimir Putin is a Christian and that Russia’s State Orthodox Catholic Church is also a Christian even as that organization teaches the same blasphemous idolatry promoted by the Roman Catholic Church.
These are the reasons that Chuck Baldwin’s agenda-based doctrine is dangerous. So in this message, I’ll be refuting and exposing Baldwin’s redefinition of the term Antichrist as the Apostle John used that word, and his misinterpretation of the man of sin in Second Thessalonians chapter 2, along with his misplaced date of the writing of John’s Revelation before the destruction of Jerusalem which he and all preterists must do to make their system work.
(End of transcript.)
I don’t like to be overly critical of people as some are, but it’s not a little thing for me when a person I like suddenly starts to teach false doctrine. I just hope and pray pastor Baldwin will come to see the truth.
I believe Sam Adams is correct about Chuck Baldwin’s preterism, but not about what he has to say about Israel and Romans chapter 11. I think pastor Baldwin got that right. Others agree with pastor Baldwin, notably Charles A. Jennings and I think Steve Gregg. Nobody’s perfect, right? I don’t claim to be. I try to follow what I believe the Word of God says, not just what some preacher says it says. And my understanding may not always be correct. I do believe the Protestant Reformers got it right about most things which is why they caused a revolution and wounded the Roman Beast with a wound close to death. (Rev. 13:3) That’s why they are hated by traditional Catholics to this very day.