Author: Philip B. Brown

Here was my reply to Pastor Bob:

If you require credentials, I'll have to say that I was not "indoctrinated" by any seminary. Perhaps that's why I've been able to see a simple solution when others have not. I grew up Southern Baptist, and would have probably been considered a pre-mil dispensationalist if I had known what the word "dispensational" meant back then. Currently I attend a Vineyard church, which is basically mainstream evangelical in doctrine.

My real learning has come by way of debate. But first let me go back to the beginning of my journey of learning:

I grew up with an interest in Bible prophecy. I had read all the popular books about the end times, such as The Late Great Planet Earth. But one day, around 1987, I realized that after reading all these book I had no idea where in the Bible all this stuff about Bible prophecy was located. So I decided to put all the books down, and I started to read the Bible with a purpose of understanding Bible prophecy. In other words, I had previously read parts of the Bible simply because I was Christian. It was out of a sense of duty as a Christian that I read the Bible when I did. I had not read the Bible in the pursuit of really learning about something that I was interested in. My new desire to study eschatology from the Bible alone got me hooked. I really started to enjoy learning the Bible. It became my passion.

Then, as the Internet began to immerge, I began to debate eschatology. I spent countless hours every day debating on email groups. My passion grew to the point of being every day. Eschatology is the one area of theology where it seems to be OK to disagree. Everyone has his own slight variation within every major camp of interpretation. I would spend countless hours studying Scripture in order to find arguments for my views, which would change over time. And you had to really understand your opponents view in order to do any reasonable job of debating. You have to do a lot of research as well as Bible study. And the Internet became a great tool for doing research. I think you can a learn whole lot more by debate than by sitting in a classroom. It's the difference between hearing and doing. It's the difference between a teacher and being a student. Debating is like teaching. The teacher learns a lot more than the student. And unlike the classroom, it never ends.

Over time, I started to realize that every topic of the Bible affects every other topic. I would see this as debate discussions would naturally move well outside of what is traditionally considered "eschatology." So by learning to debate eschatology, over time, I learned to think outside the box about all topics of the Bible.

So why hasn't someone come up with the New Wine System before? Well, in centuries past, theologians were strongly indoctrinated against millennialism of any sort. Anabaptists were killed because of their beliefs in water immersion and millennialism. The high majority of the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, were amillennial. In order to be amillennial, your whole way of reading Scripture is very allegorical. You look for the spiritual meaning, not the literal meaning. So the New Wine System would have been way off their way of thinking.

So premillennialism can among in 1830. The church began to seriously think millennialism for the first time since the first and second century. And millennialism is the core solution for the New Wine System. But the millennialism that immerged was dispensationalism. Unlike amillennialism, you were indoctrinated to think in terms of Israel and the Church as being separate. I have a friend who is a pastor that graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary. I think he somewhat understands my system. But he cannot seem to think outside the box of dispensationalism. The idea that the Church is Israel is so foreign to him that he simply cannot consider the idea that it might be true. He doesn't believe in the pre-tribulation rapture, because he was not able to see that in Scripture. But his thinking is 100 percent dispensational. Knowing him, I can see how it would be impossible for someone like him, after coming out of Dallas, to ever think outside the box of dispensationalism in order to come up with a system like the New Wine System.

But what about the early church in the first and second centuries? They were millennial (chiliast) in their thinking. However, they distanced themselves from the Jews. And they were Greek (Hellenistic) in their background. So they viewed the New Testament from the perspective of heaven-or-hell when you die. And this indoctrination is probably the most powerful one that his kept everyone from considering anything like the New Wine System. It's not just the seminary students that are indoctrinated with heaven-or-hell when you die. Everyone is taught that from early childhood. It take a very strong will to think outside this strong-box in order to consider anything else. And all the Bibles before the modern-day translations used the word "Hell" for Hades and Sheol. I think perhaps it's only modern-day dispensationalists, who started to think friendly about the Jews, that brought our thinking to the point where we accepted a Bible that used Hades and Sheol instead of Hell. But even still, very few theologians would seriously consider the idea that one might not be destined for heaven or hell immediately upon death.

So here is what happens when you go to seminary: First, you learn the basics of the Bible. You lean what it teaches. And you do so with the traditional presupposition of going to heaven or hell when you die. Almost everything in the New Testament has something to do with that question: whether or not one goes to heaven or hell, and what they must do in order to go to heaven. (Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.) THEN, you finally take your eschatology course. Eschatology is always the last chapter in a book on systematic theology. You have already made up your mind on everything else. Now you must pick from one of two major camps of eschatology thinking: dispensationalism or amillennialism. To consider anything in the middle would invalidate what you have already been taught about the New Testament. So it never enters your mind.

You said that the New Wine System is simple, and you wondered why nobody has considered it before. But that simplicity only came after you were willing to apply the Jewish thinking of not going to heaven or hell when you die. And you were willing to consider the possibility of that only because of my claim that it solved a whole bunch of problems. The fact that it's Jewish in thinking also gives it credibility. Only then is one brought to the point of even considering reading something that they don't already believe. If it's religious, most people will only read books that they already agree with, based on what's written on the book cover.

I've just now put out the seventh edition of the book, and I'm now listing seven major problems of Scripture that are solved. (And most Christians don't even like to acknowledge that there are any problems.) Until recently, I didn't know about the more modern-day debate of lordship salvation vs. free-grace salvation. After studying that debate, I saw that the New Wine System solves that problem as well. I've really come to believe that all Scriptural problems are solved by the system. So I now have a new edition that includes a chapter on the lordship salvation debate.

But let me bring you back to the first edition. Back then, I only addressed one problem. And it was the problem of people dying having never heard about Christ. And back then I had not realized how Jewish my solution was. I had come up with the solution purely based on my studies of eschatology. When I first presented my book to my traditional conservative evangelical pastor, he would not even read the book. In other words, I was solving a problem that was considered taboo. Then later, I started to realize how it also solved Calvinism vs. Arminianism.

One day my Dallas-graduate dispensational-thinking friend, mentioned earlier, said that my system sounded like purgatory, and purgatory is not in the Bible. I think he was saying that in order to discredit the system. My response was that purgatory is not in the Bible, but the millennium is. And he had to agree. I began to realize that I had solved an issue which historically was another church divider. This being between the Catholics and the Protestants. So this became new information for the next edition of my book.

In other words, over time, the book as grown a lot. Today's seventh edition was published March 1, 2010. The original publish-date was August 11, 2006. Since then, the system has solved more and more problems. And it's now shown as being Jewish in thinking. This gives it the credibility for people to even consider reading it. You say it seems like a simple solution. But originally it was something that I could not even get my former pastor to read.

So that's my story. I guess my claim is that the New Wine System could not have come out of a seminary, because it originated with eschatology and moved from there into a full system of interpretation. This is backwards from the way it's taught in seminary. And before the Internet it would have been impossible to debate the way I did. And the Internet has provided a means for anyone to be heard. So before the Internet, someone like me would have never had the opportunity to learn the way I did, or to get his idea heard. Also, the print-on-demand book technology, around for just about ten years, has been very valuable. It has allowed me to constantly improve the book over the course of seven editions without huge costs of printing thousand of books that become obsolete before they are sold. (I actually do have another book from 1996 titled, "Lord of the Sabbath." It was printed with a printing-press. Many boxes of these books are still in my basement because I no longer agree with my own book.) It's really been a long and interesting journey of learning.

Thanks,
Let me know if you have any questions,
Philip Brown