Eschatology Reformation

Don't Fear Jesus came and Reigns Now Great news for us.

2008-12-31T18:16:00.000-08:00

Second Coming
BRIEF OVERVIEW OF 70 A.D. AND CHRIST’S RETURN
The New Testament paints a clear picture for us, seen clearly by only a few. Because of man’s rejection of God back then, which is being repeated today, a sad state developed for man, but out of all this sadness developed the beautiful picture of God's love and devotion and a future for those who have dedicated their lives to the Father and His work. This picture also shows how He has created the new heaven and new earth and the fulfillment of what was put into place from the beginning: from the time man and woman sinned and were removed from God’s presence. All the prophecies fulfilled finally as creation itself groans in wait for this moment which came between 30 A.D. to 70 A.D.
Included in this picture is the birth, death and resurrected Christ and then 40 years later, his return in 70 A.D. (the end of a second 40 years of wondering and preparation)
The cross is the central and most significant event since the creation of the world with the removal of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The cross was just 40 years before another climatic world event of 70 A.D. where God with His Christ came in Judgment in His Kingdom, not only to destroy the Jewish system and fulfill the old law and all prophecies, but also to remove the Jews from the earth forever. The cross was the beginning of this great event and it was fully manifested and completed in 70 A.D. when the harvest of the earth would come. "These were redeemed from among men, the firstfruits unto God and the Lamb". (Rev. 14:46)
In the N.T. period we see what remained of the old heaven and the old earth; of the Law of Moses located at physical Jerusalem which really began at Mt. Sinai (Acts 7:30 & Ex. 3:14). Physical Jerusalem was a shadow or type of the new city Jerusalem, a spiritual city that is described in Revelation as "coming down" out of heaven. (Rev. 22:14,15 & 21:2,10-27). This new city was replacing the old physical city located in Jerusalem during the 40 years from the cross to 70 A.D. when Christ returned in judgment and claimed his people in his kingdom. The same kingdom which he preached was coming soon while he was here. This was a time when man finally was redeemed and was returned to the Father. Death is no longer separating man from their Creator and after 4,000 years the Tree Of Life was again made available to spiritual man and the tares were removed at the harvest time.
This new city Jerusalem is referred to also as the bride of Christ and represents the picture of the marriage and the marriage feast where Christ is the groom. (Rev. 19:7 & 21:2,9) This also is the time which is reported in II Pet. 3:13 and Rev 21:1 where the replacement of the old heaven and old earth took place, which we read about in Isaiah 65:17-20 and 66:22. This depicts the old relationship and order between heaven and earth of the Hebrew people with their Creator at Jerusalem where all nations would flow to see God’s great works and his people. This change which took 40 years is also referred to as birth pains, meaning much suffering would come before the new change took place. See Acts 14:22: "We must through much tribulation Enter into the Kingdom of God".
This 40 years between the cross and Christ’s return in 70 A.D. replicates the 40 years of wondering in the wilderness as the Hebrew people did under Moses. The wandering was a transition period before the Jews entered the promised land when they were tried and tested and cleansed and prepared for entrance there. Joshua and Caleb were the only two people from the original group out of Egypt that was over the age of 20 who entered the promised land. (Numbers 32:9-13) Not even Moses was allowed to enter. Only those people under 20 years of age who left Egypt or those born in the wilderness entered the promised land. This means those who entered were between the ages of 1 day up to 59 years of age, except Caleb and Joshua. (1 Corinthians. 10:5-12) The adults who left Egypt were not worthy enough to enter the promised land. It took them 40 years to travel 40 miles and they died in their sins just as did the Hebrew Jews and Gentiles who were not worthy to enter Christ’s kingdom. There was a co-existing of the two periods of time before entrance into the promised land; very similar to the co-existence of Christ’s Kingdom with the old heaven and old earth under the Law as the Jewish age ended, and both times a remnant was saved to enter.
Christ was a mystery hidden from the world and still is to the world today a non-understood mystery. The events of the cross and 70 A.D. is what the world has been waiting for ever since man was separated from God. Now, under the reign of Christ, man is being brought back to the Creator and redeemed at last with victory over death by the blood of Christ and his resurrection, the perfect and final sacrifice. As Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, their sin separated them from God the Father and were given a death sentence because they could no longer eat of the tree of life or remain in the presence of the Creator.
70 A.D. is known incorrectly as the "end of the world" (K.J.) but is rather the "end of the age", the Jewish age which was also the end of the Jews. Also it was the final end of the Law of Moses, the Old Covenant and end of the animal sacrifices and priesthood and never to be again. Also the fulfilling of all prophesied and all that was written. There was no more to be written because there was no more prophecies.
It was also the end of the graves where every soul "slept with the fathers". We no longer wait in the graves for Christ and his redeeming blood because he has come and shed his blood once for all times. Now at death we are resurrected.
It was the end also of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Such things as miracles, tongues, revelations and the work of the apostles, elders (bishops), prophets and preachers sent of God was also ended at that time. There was no promise of an end of the world mentioned anywhere nor a destruction of the world. There is not a prophet, elder or preacher on earth today or since that time that is sent of God. Anyone who claims to be one of these is counterfeit. Yet, in every gathering there is a pulpit with a preacher standing behind it and there are also usually elders; all counterfeit. Peter said in Acts 10:42... "and he commanded ‘us’ to preach unto the people". Now read 1 Peter 4:11--If any man speaks (let him speak) as the oracles of God: if any man minister (let him do it) as of the ability which God giveth, that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ". In Acts 10:40 Peter said, "and he commanded ‘us’ to preach unto the people". You see, it was not anyone who wanted to be a preacher, it was only those God Chose who spoke what they were given to speak. Compare that with those today who preach more than 33,000 different messages and doctrines. There is no one on earth today who should be in that position. Revelation from heaven to people is in the past. Because we have all of God’s revelation and there is no more being given today, preachers sent of God are no more. Therefore, anyone who stands before an assembly today on earth and declares or allows himself to be declared a preacher of God is a counterfeit. Paul told the Philippians (2:12)..."work out your own salvation with fear and trembling". He never declared to them to pick out a preacher from among them and put him up front to continue where I left off while I’m gone! This responsibility was given to the elders back then, not to preachers, and we can no longer have elders.
There were three epochs of time known as the heaven and earth. The first ending and the second beginning at Mt. Sinai and was manifested in Canaan after 40 years of wandering. The second was ending as the third was beginning at the cross and was manifested at 70 A.D., 40 years later when the end came to the Jews and their law in physical Jerusalem which was totally destroyed along with the Jewish race. Most of them were killed and of those captured, many or all died. The remnant escaped to Pella and vanished into other bloods resulting in no original Jews being left on the earth. Those today calling themselves Jews speak the Yiddish language because they are descendants of the Turks and Honds. They are not true, original Jews.
This judgment upon the Jews does not, however, prevent God’s judgment upon the nations again and again as He has done many times over the last 6,000 years.
Christ, the firstfruit, conquered death by his resurrection, the same death that came after the first sin in the garden. Then came the resurrection of the dead who "slept with the fathers", then the resurrected ones still alive chosen by God. Remember the parable Christ spoke to his disciples because they thought (Luke. 19:11-) that the Kingdom of God should immediately appear. A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return. It was depicting Christ when he left for 40 years and returned with his kingdom.
Remember also Luke. 9:27, "But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the Kingdom of God". Mark 1:15, "The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand, repent ye and believe the gospel".
Remember at the end of the 4th gospel (John 21-23) Jesus was talking to the apostles when he appeared to them the third time after he was risen from the dead, Peter seeing John asked Jesus, "Lord, and what shall this man do"? (asking about John, when and how he would die) (Vs. 22) "Jesus saith unto him, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee"? Here we have a timetable of Christ’s return within the days of John’s life and we know that John was still around when Christ returned in 70 A.D. as Christ prophesied. Romans 6:9,10... "Knowing Christ being raised from the dead...death hath no more dominion over him .II Tim. 1:10 says..."Christ, who hath abolished death... I Corinthians. 15:20-26 (23) Christ the firstfruit: afterwards they that are Christ’s at his coming: (24) Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God ...when he shall have put down all rule and authority and power... (25) For he must reign, till he hath put down all enemies under his feet (26)The last enemy is death". Notice here, "Christ the firstfruit" and then afterwards the others. Afterwards does not mean 2000 years later. (27)" For he hath put all things under his feet (except God) and when all things are subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject...(to God) that God may be all in all".
Paul knew that Christ was coming soon and in his time on earth. That’s why he suggested that it was better not to marry because he knew that this total destruction of the Jews was coming soon (70 A.D.) and that building a family would be in vain because within a few years all would be gone. Although he did tell them to go ahead and marry rather than sin in lust if they could not contain themselves. See 1 Corinthians. 7:8, 9.
The "religious world" today is exactly like the Jews were back then. They are sitting around waiting for Christ to come and restore Israel exactly as they waited back then. Others are waiting for Christ to meet us in the air and the world to be removed and cannot explain the 1,000 years. Does history repeat itself? Why do we point our fingers at the Jews for still waiting for the Messiah when we today are also waiting for the Messiah to return. The silly Jews never accepted His coming and the "Christians" never accepted his return in 70 A.D. Who is better or who is worse?
In Matthew 23:15, Jesus said, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves". Does history repeat itself?
What I have placed before you here is a light overview or summary of my understanding of what God reveals to me through the scriptures. I am no longer waiting for Christ to return as the world today waits in vain and "preachers", not sent of God, keep on proclaiming, "He is coming" and thus deceive the world as did the Pharisees of old. Have you ever noticed how many people were lead to their death at the end of the last century and now even in Africa hundreds have died or are being killed by false preachers convincing them that the world was ending and taking all of their possessions. It’s so easy to get followers today because of hundreds of years of false teaching by preachers who are not sent of God. This is sad because God is not sending anymore preachers today and we should have been able to figure that out by now.
The religious world took a left turn hundreds of years ago and is still off course. There are no more preachers sent by God today just as there are no more prophets, apostles or elders, only people who lead other people astray just because it is so easy to do. Titus 1:3 says, "But hath in due times manifested his word through preaching (in the message) which is committed unto me (wherewith I was intrusted) according to the commandment of God our Savior". (see also, Acts 10:42; I Thessalonians. 2:4; and 2 Tim. 1:11) In 1 Thessalonians. 1:5 Paul said, "For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit". See also, 1 Corinthians. 2:4, "My preaching was...in demonstration of the Spirit and power". Examine now 1 Corinthians. 2:9-16. "But God hath revealed unto ‘us’ (those sent of God) the things which God hath prepared for them that love him". If you listen carefully to the above writings then you will clearly see that there is no one on earth today that can fill their shoes (sandals). Acts 20:27 & 28 states, "Take heed...to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit hath made you overseers (bishops, elders)". Now who made the elders of your "church"? Did the Holy Spirit make anyone of them overseers and fill them with the revelation of God? Can you find a single place in the scriptures where God gave us the choice or the responsibility to select for ourselves preachers or elders? If so, then please show me. There is no one on earth today over us as there has been in the past, such as, priests, apostles, elders, pastors or preachers. We have only one High Priest and one God and "all" that is written points to 70 A.D. when man no longer was separated from God but redeemed at last after 4,000 years of being separated from Him.
The next event for all of us is when our spirits leave this earth after the shedding of our flesh and bones. Then will be our time, our day of reckoning, when we will give account of the life we lived upon this earth and the earth will continue on. We will give reason to our Creator when we come before Him as to why we would listen to any preacher (not sent by Him) instead of going to Him in His word and hearing the preachers God did send and His only begotten son. Remember what Christ said in Matthew 7:7, "ask and it shall be given you: seek and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you". Also Revelation 3:20, "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear "my voice", and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me". Vs. 22, "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the assemblies. If we would only look at scriptures for what they are and accept the fact that it was written to them of old 2000 years ago but not to us, but for us. If we would do that then most of the confusion would disappear.
Written by: B.R. Young AD70@erols.comChester, Virginia ©March 9, 2000

We have to talk, this is a study by samuel frost on Idealism

2008-12-08T09:45:00.000-08:00

Todd Dennis and Preteristic Idealism

Written by Samuel Frost

Wednesday, 14 March 2007 08:07

I consider Dennis to be a good friend of mine and have fellowshipped with him many times. Hopefully, after this article is read, that fellowship will remain intact. With that being said, I do want to critically evaluate his article Introduction to a Hybrid of Preterism and Idealism [1]. I printed the article of twenty pages (numbered 1-20) and will use that for numbering my footnotes from this article.

An Anti-Theological Approach?

The first thing that struck me was not the "hybrid" Dennis is attempting to construct, but for the reasons why he was doing so. He thinks he is accomplishing something that is "superior for internal spiritual rest and peace" (5). This must mean that issues of "sin", "death" and "law", which some preterists have written off, are "not for today" (along with the Holy Spirit, faith, and preaching the gospel). Here, it appears, Dennis is reacting to what we at Reign of Christ Ministries have always called hyper-preterism. This includes those who see no need for baptism, the Lord's Table, or church officers. But, he goes further than that. He speaks of some FP (full preterists) as being "mentally convinced of the "absolute gospel truth of full preterism."" (5). Is there something wrong with being "mentally convinced"? Further, he seems to fall victim to the "faculty psychology" of Freud by dividing the "head" from the "heart" (15). Full preterism is head knowledge but the reason it has not yet exploded into converting the masses is because of its "coldness" (15). I have yet to see this in my experience, but I am not the one arguing from my experiences to point out the need to abandon FP. I try to keep experiences out of theological conceptualizing. However, with that said, my mind, as a result of FP, has been deeply affected - for the better. I asked one lady I ministered to while we had a regular church meeting what difference has preterism made for her. Her answer has burned in me for years: "it has made me a nicer person." We can site individual reactions to views all day long, and none of these will "prove" the need for anything one way or the other. Our bottom line is always: what does the Bible say?

Dennis continues, though, in this fashion. Reformed FP are not universalists, not because of what the Bible says, but because we are committed more to Reformed soteriology (15). He then asks, "In light of the question of consistency, it should be considered how a consistent full preterist view, which acknowledges that the law, the devil, sin, and such were utterly destroyed in AD70, could not be considered lending itself to Comprehensive Redemption?" (15). We have been laboring on that very point for over 8 years now and believe that Evangelical theology has provided the answer: Story Framework. In other words, the Bible, particularly the Prophets, speak more to life in the Age to Come (our own day) than anything else. They defined the Age to Come. I will speak to this later. But, it seems that since questions have been raised, and since Dennis recognizes the "shoddy" work of "amateurs" (13) on the Internet (and methinks that's the real problem here - lack of intense theological training), then a need for another "hybrid" must be sought for. In roughly only 20 years of FP "scholarship", it must be abandoned! Luther's reform, if placed under such standards, never would have gotten off of the ground! Forget Copernicus! It wasn't until 60 years later that Kepler really made the heliocentric model fly. I think that Dennis is being far too premature here and has let some personal matters influence his thinking.

This experience based criticism of Dennis is made more explicit as he continues: "By insisting that the devil, law, sin and death have been utterly destroyed for all in AD70, it leaves a sense of failure within those who find themselves still very much under the chains of law and sin in their own lives" (16). I have been a Christian all of my life. For 39 years I have been going to one church or another. I witnessed all sorts of "bondage". I myself have been in what some would call "bondage" to addictive substances. Was it the devil? Demons? Was it because I was "under the law"? Was it because I was "in the flesh"? Or was it because I did not "break through" to God in my prayer life? Was it because I spoke in tongues, or denied tongues? Was it because I was a Calvinist, or an Arminianist? Is FP now the culprit so that we have to look for another new view so that I can quit smoking and occasionally having one too many? In other words, do I need the devil, the law of Moses and covenantal understanding of "the sin" and "sin under the law of Moses" in order to explain why I had eight beers the other night instead of only three? This question applies to anything else that could be called, "sin." There are different Greek and Hebrew words for "sin" and they don't all mean the same thing. But, that requires a massive study of these words and their contexts. If one definition of "sin" is no longer needed, does that mean every definition is no longer needed? Did "evil" end in A.D. 70? Hardly. How do I know? The Bible tells me so.

"Though many teachers may think that a proper doctrinal explanation of the victory we have in Christ should be sufficient to overcome this internal crisis, it is not nearly so effective; in fact, when your heart is suffering, the last thing that is needed is a pep talk or a mind game. No amount of head knowledge can heal heart suffering... rather, it makes the pain even more acute, and the situation seem even more hopeless" (16). Notice, again, the disparaging of "mind" and "head knowledge". If one runs a study of "heart" in the Hebrew, one will find that it means and is translated "mind". "As the heart thinks...." In the Bible, the heart thinks. More precise: the heart is the mind thinking. Another term for it is the "conscience."

What is the cure for this "crisis"? Not more theology. Not a "pep-talk", but Pret-Idealism! Dennis makes this plain enough: "In spite of doctrinal problems, however, it was the clear inability of the view to answer the most important internal questions such as "what now?" and "why do I struggle if sin and the devil were utterly destroyed in ad70" that drove my quest for an explanation that could address the deepest needs of Christians. Though this motivation has been dismissed as compromised by being "seeker sensitive," it is the pastor's heart within that seeks to protect the flock by driving off the wolves (which are bad doctrines, not people)" (5). So, even here, to rescue the crushed heart, who is crushed because of a doctrinal inability to reason why he still masturbates to pornography if he, while a full preterist, no longer believes in "sin" and the "devil", must understand that the reason he is confused is because of his FP. He needs the pastor to drive off the bad doctrines of FP (pep-talk? Head knowledge?). Then, when this person sees that devil, sin and the law of Moses are manifested in every generation in cyclical fashion, and that this points to the "substance" of the spiritual reality of the parousia and presence of Christ, then the "deepest needs" of his heart, not his head, will be thrown into "peace".

"And what is striking is that even as many of those in leadership positions in the past have dropped out as a result of their own inability to find rest and peace within the full preterist framework, the fundamental problem is left unadressed (sic). Dismissing the applicability of the tensions displayed in the New Testament, I believe, has a lot to do with this. By assuming perfection and total completion, we lose the results that come from the tension between old and new, and are only left with confusion as to why things aren't better than they are" (16). It is perhaps because we have a different audience who read the materials we offer that I read this with a little confusion! Maybe Dennis has encountered these folks, but in my 15 years of Preterism, I have not. In fact, I can refer the reader to one of many books (a pep talk, head game, I know) that shows that things are getting better. I plan to present that at my talk in Ohio this April. One's perspective, we believe, is flawed because the Bible is not informing it. Somehow, FP has become associated with "no more evil things in the world." But, when one sees that the Prophets themselves foretell of evil remaining in the Age to Come, this problem ceases. In fact, every Christian theology runs into this problem. Dispies have evil in the Millennium. Eternal conscience torment has evil existing forever, for that is the very thing that is being punished. Read Gerstner where he says to the effect that sinners are being punished eternally because they are eternally sinning. The reason I point out these views is that a large majority of Christian theology incorporates some eternality of evil. What, you became a FP and expected not to wrestle with the knowledge of good and evil any more? If God set it up that way in the beginning heavens and earth, what would make you think that it would not follow the pattern in the new heavens and the new earth? Sure, the devil is gone, but his role as prosecuter/accuser on the basis of law is finished. He no longer serves a useful purpose in the story. If you want him, you can have him. Just let me know by the gift of peering into the supernatural world where he is so that I can avoid him.

A crisis is caused by old paradigms not being able to answer new questions (as Thomas Kuhn so correctly pointed out). An old paradigm must be replaced by another to resolve the crises. This is true. But, sometimes the crisis is merely caused by other factors as well that are irrelevant to the paradigm. The person who drinks too much will still drink too much even if he swallows (pun) Dennis' new hybrid. My own personal issues were not the result of my theology. In fact, FP has helped me deal with those issues effectively. Once I saw that I was no longer dealing with the devil, sin, and condemnation from God based upon performing 10 Keys For Successfully Pleasing God, my ability to begin to deal with issues realistically started. No more overnight vows ("I'll never do that again"). No more running to the altar and "rededicating" myself to the Lord. And no more nights spent abusing the "hell" out of myself for being such a wicked person. Jesus has set me free, not just "partially" or "ideally", but really and fully. Yes, this needs to be worked out in terms of theological scrutiny and that's why we started what we have started at Reign of Christ Ministries.

It was the crises caused by the old eschatological models that brought about the new model of Full Preterism. The old models did not make sense. But, it appears to this writer that Dennis wants to integrate the worst of the old models back into some sort of "hybrid" model of preterism. He thinks it is necessary to have the devil, the Law, and the Death reintroduced in order to make sense of why Christians "struggle."

Dennis, as the article continues, points out again that he is dealing with an extreme form of FP. Talking about how audience relevance is not really what it is all cracked up to be, he writes, "This trend of thinking slices and dices the Word, eliminating, in some cases, the need for prayer, the need for faith, and the existence of the Holy Spirit -- as well as the applicability of the Gospel of Christ itself!" (17). It is perhaps because of Dennis' posting so much material from anything remotely sporting the name "preterist" that this conclusion has arisen in some folks' minds. I have encountered one site ran by Steve Smith. I read three articles. I deleted them and the website from my computer. These were extremists. Run from them as fast as possible. FP does not "lead" to this. And, no, one is not being inconsistent if it does not lead to this. Those are broad generalizations. Each website, each individual spouting FP must be looked at as an individual, judged as an individual and received or not received as an individual. They cannot be taken as "representative" of the whole view. Not only is this an illogical (informal) thing to do, but we could not do that for any other view. Calvin's personal life and personal time when he was living should be taken to reflect every Calvinist (or ism for that matter). Same for Luther and Lutherans. Are all believers in quantum physics like Einstein? Each website is under its own merits and each should make that known. I remember coming to Dennis' website back in the mid or late nineties and simply being overwhelmed. What is preterism? Well, at general, at bottom, at its most common link is something significant happened in A.D. 70 that has been generally overlooked by scholars, if and only if you were coming from a Dispensationalist world, because the Presbyterians and Lutherans, and some Church of Christ folks, and many, many scholars have known about this for some time. I just crawled out from under a rock. Some FP have taken this common denominator and ran with it to their own oblivion. Todd thinks it is because of FP. I think it is because they went afoul of the Bible. To point out the oblivion of some, and then charge the entire system and those who hold to it as at fault is most illogical.

Dennis again uses the language of Freud: "the inability of the mind to satisfy the heart" (15) is the charge he brings to Full Preterism. I am not sure how the "heart" is going to work out its interpretation, but since Dennis has not told us in detail, then we are left to speculate. As I have already pointed out, it appears that Dennis is mainly targeting the extreme forms of FP. As with the interpretive approach of FP, Dennis writes, "whatever advantage this may provide is more than nullified by the vast amounts of damaging doctrines reached as a result of embracing its fundamental conclusions" (17). By this he means, "Is it dangerous to one's faith to say that the Holy Spirit is no longer for today, having been marginalized by the parousia of Christ? Absolutely. It is an overthrow of people's faith to claim that faith itself is not for today, having been superseded by sight? Certainly. Is it destructive to teach that the gospel is not for today as many do, having been a specific message to the Jews of the approach of the kingdom? Without question" (17). To this let me add that I agree. But, perhaps Dennis is more aware of these types of FP schemes. I tuned them out years ago, but my point is that I tuned them out because they do not follow the teaching of Scriptures concerning the Age to Come. The Scriptures do not teach that in the Age to Come "faith" is no longer required. They do not teach that the Holy Spirit ceases His activity. They do not teach in the slightest that the Gospel stops being preached after the Second Coming.

Dennis has rightly stated that these forms of hyper-preterism need to be abandoned, but it appears that he wants to abandon them, not for the reason of theological clarity or lack thereof, but because we need the devil around in order to explain why Johnny Christian still likes to watch rated R movies and drink too much on occasion. This is hardly a reason more than it is a failure to appreciate the truth of biblical FP. He stated that anyone teaching what we have in the victory of Christ is simply giving a "pep talk." It does not heal the "heart" (which he has pitted against the head). Thus, having the devil, the law, the sin, and the death still around somehow (and he does not explain how) helps heal the heart. After all, I don't struggle with alcohol for any other reason than the fact the devil tempts me daily, the law is over me all the time and the sin is constantly tugging at my heart. I am still in "transition" from "glory to glory" (16). Can a FP framework answer these charges? Dennis does not think (or feel) that it can, but the reasons (from his head or from his heart?) he has given for why it cannot are hardly justifiable. There is a better solution; better than going back to theological Egypt where we are still "in bondage", which is exactly what Dennis suggests that we do.

The Theology of Idealist Preterism

Here I will begin the second part of this paper to point out some of the theological aspects of Dennis' view. Some of it has already been pointed out. Basically, Dennis wants an "already/not yet" scheme. For him, the "transition" period from Christ's incarnate ministry to His spiritual ministry is recognized for the first century Christians (16). I don't have to read preterist materials to understand this. In fact, I make it a habit not to read any preterist material unless it is highly academic (like Max King, Don Preston, Kurt Simmons - who, though I disagree with, has kept a standard of academics in his writings owing to his educated background and practice). I do not pay much attention to the "new preterist website" written by Johnny Preterist who all of the sudden has become an "expert" in Greek and Hebrew (by consulting his Strong's of course), and a theological beacon. Dennis disparages of these types, too (13). Back to my point, I don't have to read preterist materials to get the idea of a unique transition generation of the first century Christians. I simply need to consult James Bannerman, author of The Church of Christ (Still Waters Revival Books, 1991, reprint - 1869). Bannerman taught alongside of the great Calvinist William Cunningham at Edinburgh, Scotland. He was, and is, highly esteemed as a theologian. I used him in my book, Misplaced Hope, to show that the transition period from natural Judaism to spiritual Judaism (Christianity) ended in A.D. 70. I make the point that we try to build off of tradition instead of seeking to obliterate it. I, for one, cannot stand the mentality of some preterists that reject creeds and councils solely because they are creeds and councils. They do so to their own peril.

Now, Dennis does not want this transition period to be framed in a covenantal approach (from Old Covenant to New Covenant). He does not think that that is a correct way. We have already discussed the reasons why he does not. Rather, he wants an existential approach that actually applies the old to new transition to each individual believer today. This is where his approach runs into contradictions and must be abandoned as a plausible solution.

By positing that he sees the transition in the NT period he believes that this ended in A.D. 70. But, he must start it up again for every subsequent generation down to our own day. That is, if they had the law of the old going to the law of the new, then we must have that same experience. Far be it that similarities can be shown. Dennis wants what really happened to them to also happen to us. If they had a devil roaming around looking to devour people, then we must have it, too. If they had the law over them and the condemnation of Adam, then we must so, too. The problem here is that nothing ever ends. At least, not here on earth. Spiritual life on earth is dismal. It is full of "tears", "struggles" and hearts needing healing. By rejecting the spiritual preterism, Dennis has hopped the train that Lloyd Dale, John Anderson and some forms of Reformed Preterism like that of Walt Hibbard and Ed Stevens are riding. That is, we don't really have the fullness and perfection of Christ until we die and go to heaven. Anderson has taken this to its logical conclusion: we are not even in the kingdom and born again until we physically die. All of these views/attempts are rooted in one thing: seeing with the eyes.

As we have seen, Dennis' reasons for stating that we are not yet perfect are rooted in seeing in the natural. It's odd. Because Dennis wants the natural things to be pointers of the "substance" and invisible things. But, he "sees" tears and struggling among Christians and therefore cannot apply the fullness of the spiritual things to them precisely because they still struggle. "My approach can seem a bit urgent also because I believe there are very real consequences to looking on the outward for the substance of prophetic fulfillment" (5). These consequences are "dangerous" (17). But, isn't Dennis "looking on the outward" Christian and his tears and concluding that the fullness of the "substance" is not yet fully applied? He starts his entire criticism with the explicit acknowledgment that because of the outward struggling of the Christian today, the idea that we are "perfect" and "complete" in Christ must be abandoned. In fact, if we assume that we are perfect and complete in Christ, then we lose the life of the NT struggle and tension (16). I want to point out, again, though that Dennis did not arrive at this conclusion by considering how the fulfillment and perfection of what Christ has done for us in His cross and resurrection can be applied to the believer today in light of the fact that he still struggles, but, rather, starts with the struggling of the Christian (the outward) to conclude that the perfection and fulfillment cannot be applied today en toto. This alone is devastating to his approach.

Our approach has been in line with much traditional theology. Preterism does not need to reinvent new theology. It merely needs to see the struggle that theology has had in the past and seek to untangle its knots. Justification by Faith, as a doctrine, has ran into this problem. From a Roman Catholic perspective, an outwardly sinning individual cannot be said to have full justification and pardon from God. This is applying the spiritual to the obviously, outwardly imperfect individual. Rather, then, justification is infused and becomes, in terms of process, akin to sanctification. No one can lay claim, they say, to complete holiness. One cannot arrive at that day until the process has ended in glorification; resurrection. But, the Reformed theologians argued that justification is immediate and entire. The New Perspectivists have criticized this older view of the Reformed faith. What's going on here? Eschatology!

I cannot spell it out here, obviously. But, the theological reasons given for applying perfect, justifying salvation to the believer in spite of the fact of his outward imperfection has already been done centuries ago. I apply the same theological reasoning to sanctification and glorification. By seeing the Second Coming as already past, justification can be applied today fully and entirely, as well as sanctification and glorification. They are spiritual applications. The New Perspectivists says, rightly so, that since the Second Coming has not yet happened, then no one can be completely justified any more than any one can claim they have been completely sanctified. Dennis appears to be echoing the New Perspectivists. If Dennis cannot apply glorification and sanctification immediately to the believer today (as a result of the finished work of Christ), then neither can he apply full justification and pardon for sins to the individual today. This follows by strict logic. We are either in process from "glory to glory" as he believes we still are, or we are not. If we are, then I would agree with the New Perspectivists: we are not fully and entirely justified and must work to show that we are in Christ through Church participation and high moral living (now we get into the homeschooling crowd and women wearing only dresses crowd).

The problem is eschatology. Dennis' solution affirms A.D. 70. However, "The differences between FP and P-I are actually quite fundamental, resulting in a countless number of divergences. The key difference is in where one sees the ultimate realm of prophetic fulfillment -- whether seeing prophecy referring exclusively to natural events (and their consequential spiritual application) fulfilled once-for-all in history, as in the case of FP, or in seeing Israel's prophecies and natural events as pictures signifying the greater realities fulfilled eternally in Christ, as is typically the case with P-I" (4). Now, one may not see the difference here in this paragraph. But, there is a difference. The ultimate "realm" of course is "up there" somewhere in heaven. It isn't here on earth because evil still exists, as well the sin, the law and the devil.

Now, I will quote Dennis' article at length, because in the beginning points, he sounds like our Mike Grace, who has been feverishly laboring in hermeneutics proper for the last several years. "Though most full preterist systems don't deny that spiritual truths can be applied from the events of AD70 (though some do), the Idealist hybrid being presented in this article (which is just one of many) takes exactly the opposite view -- that AD70 itself was the application of everlasting spiritual realities. (That the fall of Jerusalem was given to illuminate greater things is completely consistent with the entire history of Israel's "schoolmaster" role to point to everlasting realities in Christ Jesus.) Therefore, by focusing primarily on the shadows and types given to signify true prophetic fulfillment, one misses their true significance altogether. This is not to dismiss the natural show, but rather to illuminate it, allowing the temple to stand (and fall) for that which it was always intended - a visible show of invisible things" (5). I don't think I could have said this better myself. In sum, "The things we see help us understand the things we can not" (5). Apply this to the believer: I cannot "see" that you are perfect, but I understand through revelation knowledge and the verdict of God that you are. By seeing that you are not perfect in this world helps me to understand the nature of the perfection that you have in Christ. It is a top-down understanding. I call the things that are not as though they were. I see an imperfect Christian, but I call him, "perfect" in every way.

Next, he goes on to consider an interpretation of Church history: "In this light, the Roman-Jewish War was an even more significant event than is appreciated by even the most informed. It was, after all, not only the complete end of the people of God as an external nation, forever ending those religious and political things which were only ever "in part" or "copies of the true," but it was also the visible show of God's invisible hand as it works throughout all generations -- within His people, and upon His enemies" (5). And, "The reason why the entirety of Christian history on earth could thrive spiritually despite near complete ignorance of the Roman-Jewish war has to do with the fact that "AD70" didn't fulfill the eternal promises in Christ, but simply pointed thereto" (5). This last statement is a bit puzzling. A.D. 70 didn't "fulfill" anything, but pointed to the eternal promises in Christ. It was a fulfillment of promises given to Daniel, and it pointed to the eternal promises of Christ. But what are the eternal promises of Christ? Paul said that Jesus "came to fulfill the promises made to our forefathers", the Jewish forefathers and the promise made to Adam: that satan's head would be crushed, the sin would be brought to an end and the death would be swallowed up in victory.

It is here that, as noted above, Dennis gets into confusion. The A.D. 70 event was not Jesus' second appearing, even though Hebrews 9.27 explicitly tells us this. It was, instead, pointing to the fact that Jesus was "already" reigning forever in heaven (6). What happened to the "transition period" he affirms? There was no "not yet"?

He affirms, rightly so, that there is an "inside" and "outside" motif in the Kingdom of God. Again, Reign of Christ ministries has pointed out this in the OT and the NT, especially in the Gospel of Mark. Universalism is explicitly denied because the patterns of the stories, which make up the meta-story will not allow it. Preterist Universalism fails because it breaks the patterns - it breaks the stories. Here, Dennis goes on to suggest, rightly so, that the Kingdom of God grows and expands. This is in keeping with the numerous prophecies in the OT concerning the enlarging of the nation of Israel (Is 54, for example). This started back in Genesis as well when Noah speaks to his three sons. Ham is marked, but Shem will enlarge his tents to include Japheth. One has to follow the patterns in the story, so that when the substance arrived it would be easily identifiable according to the Scriptures (the Hebrew Bible). Anything not taught in the OT is not taught in the NT.

Jesus announced that his kingdom, the one that was "near" and "at hand" and would "come" within that "generation" and was already making pre-parousaic preparations within his people, would be "like a mustard seed." Jerusalem's Fall would point to and mark the arrival of this kingdom on earth within God's people. But, the Fall was natural, and, naturally, was loud. The arrival of the kingdom was spiritual, and came with a still, small drop of a tiny mustard seed. You could hardly see its arrival. But, it would grow, and is growing, and will continue to grow so that "all the birds of the air" can come in and find rest among its branches. I think Dennis and I would agree here more or less, but this hardly leads to where he is going.

The resurrection of the dead, the great, white throne judgment, etc. are all rightly seen as events that occur not in the natural realm, but in the spiritual realm. True. Physical bodies did not come out of their tombs in A.D. 70. It is good to see that Dennis here is still preteristic. He sees the continuing application of the resurrection of the dead to all those who have believed and will believe, and here he sounds more Reformed than ever. Sifting through the details here would allow for a great room of agreement between Dennis and our own work. If one were reading Dennis up to this point, not much has been said that would be radically different. Maybe this is because Dennis is targeting more radical forms of hyper-preterism. I certainly have not been paying any attention to these other views. They don't fit the framework, and this is usually seen in a just a few paragraphs, and so I stop reading them at that point. It's like hearing that Joseph Smith claims to be Prophet. I immediately dismiss Mormonism on that basis since prophecy ceased. I don't need to consider Mormon theology any longer. The same is true of Islam. Mohammed was not a Prophet. He was a con-artist.

Dennis makes this plain in what he is targeting: "By looking at one historical manifestation of the everlasting substance and declaring it to be the only application contemplated by the Word of God has consequences upon peoples' lives" (7). Correct. Resurrection (regeneration) still happens today (see this wonderful article). Faith is still necessary today. Gospel preaching and church fellowship are necessary today. The law written in our hearts is not a list of suggestions. For Paul, the "law written in the heart" is summed up in one word for the Christian: conscience (see this article). However, when Dennis moves to consider his next topic, he writes, "One dramatic consequence of looking to events of the natural realm as the complete fullness of prophetic intent is to divorce the applicability of the internal tensions and pressures of the New Testament people from our lives -- as well as the solutions they found to settle the inner turmoil in the midst of persecution" (7). It is here that the issues raised above begins.

Dennis denies that "near" and "at hand" mean "40 years" in the typical FP treatment. He affirms the "transition" period (40 years), but then strangely quotes a list passages that show that everything was already fulfilled before A.D. 70. Scholars, with which we agree, and who are not preterists, have long noted Paul's Greek language of transition. The famous phrase, "I am saved, I am being saved, I will be saved" says it all. This can apply equally to justification and sanctification. These Greek verbs, as Dennis fails to mention, are temporal forms. Thus, we speak of these as complete (aorist, either in regard to time or without regard to time, but never devoid of time), on-going (present aspect), and future. From one standpoint, it is complete, from another it is being made complete, and from another, something will happen to complete it. From this, the FP framework of the Forty Years, matching the patterns of previous OT stories, to A.D. 70 fits this Greek analysis like a glove. I do not need to consult preterists here. I need to consult Greek, technical commentaries to make my case. It didn't take much work to fit the FP framework into already existing theological concepts. That's why I like reading the dead guys.

So, on one hand, Dennis affirms the transition period, and acknowledges that "the Roman-Jewish War was an even more significant event than is appreciated by even the most informed. It was, after all, not only the complete end of the people of God as an external nation, forever ending those religious and political things which were only ever "in part" or "copies of the true."" (5). That is, the transition period lead to the complete end of the people of God as an external nation. So, something happened in A.D. 70 which was not to be repeated. The transition period marked a heading towards the "complete end". This was unique, historically speaking. So Dennis appears to affirm.

Also, as we have seen, Dennis ties the resurrection of the dead, the Judgment and the Second Coming to A.D. 70. Much of Dennis' reasoning here about establishment and manifestation can be seen most notably in Reformed theology. He points out John Gill, the staunch Calvinist who greatly influenced the works of modern Reformed theologians such as Clark, Reymond, Henry and Machen. If one is not familiar with these theological, and often difficult, concepts one may miss the full import of Dennis' treatment. I noted that that is one of the problems in FP: lack of theological thinking. It is interesting, though, to note that Dennis recommends Gill when he so disparages the "head" versus the "heart."

"In the case of full preterism, it is generally treated as axiom that beyond AD70, in the historical "new covenant age," or "new heavens and earth," there is a new administration between God and the world at large... as opposed to simply a greater level of revelation of that which has always been the reality" (12). True. We have argued this point as well. The inside/outside motif of the entire Bible did not change in A.D. 70. God's stories has been illustrating this pattern since the Garden of Eden (Adam was created outside the Garden, taken and place "inside" the Garden, then exiled "out". This is a constant pattern in the Patriarchs and Israel and Jesus Himself). In short, the "reality" of what is revealed in a greater degree in Christ is that the inside/outside is a heavenly reality. Again, Universalism must be denied on this point because it breaks the mold. It is foreign. How this applies to the devil, the law, the sin, and the death Dennis attempts to spell out, but fails.

Instead of seeing another solution, Dennis is reacting to the most extreme forms of FP. I think he himself goes to the extreme in the other direction, wanting to make every verse in the Bible individually meaningful for today by way of application, divorcing, it appears, any reading of Scripture through historical exegesis (a valid form of exegesis accepted by all Evangelical canons of thought).

Dennis heads towards a mystical approach: "There are predictable consequences of viewing scripture solely in its "historical context," considering it as only to Jews under the "old covenant age" and the "old heavens and earth" -- and not to anyone "today." (many will say "the scriptures were not written TO us, but they are FOR us.. to which I disagree, considering that the author is not truly the historical man who put words to paper, but is the eternal Logos Spirit, speaking to His offspring - "See Original Writers' Intent Not Final Authority on Meaning"). This distinction between the written word and the Living Word reveals the bigger picture, in that we can either approach the study according to our man-centered level of comprehension, attempting to box in redemptive history with our futile systems of explanation (letter killeth), or we can recognize that what is at play is something completely transcendent and timeless (spirit giveth life)" (12,13). I can infer from this that Dennis' view is not "man made"? I can also see that he applies his own rule. The phrase "letter killeth" is from Paul. There, as virtually every modern commentator would agree, he is speaking of the outward form of obedience to Moses. But, with Dennis' existential and mystical approach, the "letter killeth" does not need a historical context. The phrase can now mean anything that is, "attempting to box in redemptive history with our futile systems of explanation." Very postmodern. But, this begs the question of Dennis' hybrid view. Is that not a box? And is he not trying to explain why Christians still struggle? If one follows this approach, the Scriptures can come to mean anything, so long as it is applied in a meaningful way, and did not rely on historical investigation.

Next, he moves on to consider the issues of universalism. It is somehow implied that if "the Death" is destroyed, then universalism can make a case. False. Every eschatology has an end to "the Death". When the Death is destroyed for, say, Premillennialists, does that mean that everyone is now brought to heaven? How can some remain in the Second Death when the First Death is gone? Dennis seems to think that this is a serious problem. "And though I do not embrace Universalism myself, I absolutely recognize that to them belongs the progressive banner of full preterism, and that they are correct to declare themselves the most consistent preterists" (14). This is entirely false. If it were true, then every eschatological system leads to universalism because every system, at some point, has an end to the Death! Dennis' remarks here are not based on reasoning, but upon something else. "The numbers do not lie, and point directly to the intimate relationship between all forms of full preterist eschatology and Universalism. In the coming months, the two hundred year history of Preterist Universalism will be presented here" (14). Again, what numbers? Where did he get these numbers? Were they accurately taken, and monitored and checked several times for flaws? When was a national, historical census taken to reflect these numbers? Where's the data? Or, is Dennis merely reflecting something else? Universalism is not a preterist problem precisely because preterism did not invent universalism! One can go back to Origen for that. Christians are to blame for Universalism, therefore, Christians are wrong! Just because some universalists are using preterism for a framework that they think helps there case does not make Dennis' accusations here true. This type of arguing I am used to hearing from atheists who reason that Luther was catalyst for Hitler's power. Dennis should be above such types of obvious fallacies.

"Considering the sweeping nature of the fundamental assumption of world-wide New Covenant / New Heavens and Earth application in the post-AD70 environment, the answers given to that question demand intense scrutiny. Though particular answers to that dilemma have been offered, they usually require the creation of a previously unknown damning "law of Christ" or some other "doctrinal patch" to cover this hole -- such as a redefinition of "second death," or the creation of a brand new laws which secure for them the balance between particular atonement with universal eschatology. Obviously, the Reformed answer will be that Adam's death still applies to those not in Christ -- which is precisely the point of this article.. that the consummation is to be found IN CHRIST, and not in history. To say that the "consummation of the ages is in ad70" in a universal fashion, and then to make the reception of atonement individually in Christ regardless of that consummation is the inconsistency with which the "historical corporate consummationism" of the Reformed (all limited atonement full preterist systems) are forced to live" (15). I hope this is not a technical response from Dennis.

Let us rephrase his words here in light of Isaiah 26.10, speaking of the new heavens and new earth: "And the wicked man is shown grace, he does not learn righteousness even in a land of uprightness. And he does not see the majesty of the Lord" (my translation). "It is taught among Reformed full prets that death was defeated for all, yet that one must be in Christ to receive its benefits" (15). Grace is shown to all, but the wicked do not receive its benefits. They do not see the majesty of the Lord. How can that be? Further, in Zechariah 14.1-11 is, largely, Rev 21, 22. After the events of 1-11 we have 12-21. Not all nations submit. But, "there is only one king over all the land" (14.9). How can Yahweh rule over the world, yet some nations receive not the benefits of this reign? When seen in this light, Dennis appears to forget that there is a Second Death. This is much like the First Death. In Greek, it is "the Death" and "the second one, the Death". The First Death came through Adam and is equal to "the condemnation" (Rom 5). So, why would we not think that since the Tree of Life is now manifest in God's People, that the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil ceased? Man has two trees to eat from. Following the pattern, the eternal reality of creation is seen also in the Age to Come new heavens and new earth. You have two Trees. Dismiss the Tree of Life (fail to submit to the King of all the Earth and who is King over all the kingdoms of the world), and is there not to be any condemnation? The new covenant is not a condemnation-less covenant! No universalist can get around the FACT of The Second One, The Death." Dennis says this is "redefinition". In what way he never explains. He just makes the charge and moves on, parading the universalists as the most consistent FP system!

The fact of the matter is that Dennis' view falls apart here, too. He must deal with the swallowing up of "the death" and "the second one, the death." When was "the Death" swallowed? Dennis still has it around. When was satan's head crushed? He is still "roaming." When did the Second Death take the place of the now defunct First Death, since the First Death is thrown into the power of the fires of the Second Death. It is condemned, as well as satan and the beast. When did this happen? Or, has it always been the eternal heavenly reality only now being manifested that it has always been the case that the Death has been swallowed up in the Second Death? Confused yet? Good.

Conclusion

This has been one of the toughest periods in my life. I have aimed my guns at Ed Stevens rapture solution, and because I am friends with Virgil Vaduva and lend a hand at Planet Preterist, I have lost a few friends (Dave Green was one of them, who thinks very close along our lines). John Anderson and Lloyd Dale have gone off the path in our estimation as well. And, now, Todd Dennis. One would think that FP is falling apart, but, I comfort myself with history. The Reformation was falling apart and the Peasants Revolt almost killed it. One could say this about anything. I don't follow empirically based criticisms. I could easily site numbers and e-mails with our website, or with Planet Preterist that shows a remarkable growth. I don't encounter universalists much. I have met maybe two or three. I have conversed with some of them. But I don't see them in droves. I have spoken at every major preterist conference in the past 6 years and I just don't see it. I see new faces every years, but not raving universalists.

Yes, I have heard of stories of those losing their faith over FP. Again, that case can be made for Calvinism and Arminianism. It's a fallacy to argue like that. So, I never pay attention to those types of arguments. We just kept on digging in Evangelical scholarship and journals, documenting the confirmation of the biblical FP framework, not going to the extremes of hyper-preterism, not going back to the useless "already/not yet" scheme. Dennis applies the already/not yet to us today so that Christian sin can be meaningful. After all, that's what he is really after. Let's review quickly the facts: 1. FP cannot answer the reason why Christians sin. 2. Universalism is the most logically consistent FP framework. Therefore, 3. We must apply the law, the sin, and the devil to the Christian again to answer number1. And, we must abandon FP so that we do not arrive at the more consistent universalistic FP. That's it in a nutshell.

How Dennis attempts to do this results in a quasi-mystical approach to interpreting the Scriptures. The individual, rather than the text read in its historically God-given time, takes precedent. "God spoke to us in the past..." (Hebr 1.1). We must accept that God is timeless and all the truths of the promises have always been fulfilled. They are only being manifested in time as pointing to this fact. But, they are not always manifested and established for the individual, even though, they may be timelessly true. I sound like a Buddhist here. For me, this is far from biblical reasoning. Dennis disdains logical reasoning as man centered and head knowledge. It cannot answer the "heart." I could argue against these notions in massive detail, but for now, step back and take a picture of what you have just read between Dennis and myself.

Rather than see a need for the devil, the law and the sin, I can see that in the Age to Come, the Bible does not see a cessation of evil knowledge (evil thinking), nor does it see a mass conversion of every human being. Universalism does not fulfill any OT prophecy, therefore it is wrong. The cessation of evil does not fulfill any biblical prophecy. The Death is swallowed up in Isaiah, but people still die, still refuse to see the manifestation of the grace of God and learn righteousness. They are subjected to what Isaiah called "the fire of sulpher". John got it from Isaiah. If Isaiah didn't say it, neither did John. I do not, then, need the devil. I have the knowledge of good and evil.

Not every sin is a transgression of Moses' law. By Dennis' stereotypically reducing the Christian struggle today to "bondage" and "chains" to sin, he has effectively dismissed the context of Paul (that's a letter killeth reading), and has effectively undercut the work of Christ in terms of the historical context in which God chose to reveal his Purpose in Christ for all believers. Instead of seeking to describe sin in terms of good and evil and its knowledge, Dennis has jumped back to describe sin in terms of Moses' law. Why he thinks this is good for the Christian today I have no idea.

If the death is still around, then so is your condemnation. With the destruction of the Death, the condemnation in Adam was effectively removed. Dennis asks how can this be for the believer, but not for the wicked. This is answered by replacing the First Death with a new heavens and new earth Death, the Second one. Had this not been revealed to us, and had this verdict of God's court been uttered, then universalism can make a case. As such, it cannot. The Second Death prevents universalism from being true. It is like God saying, "the Gospel is going to the world, to being healing to nations and reveal my son, Jesus. But, not every one is going to see my glory. Some will refuse it, and for them, I have decreed a Second Death for those who reject the New Tree of Life." Pretty simple to me...but that's because I am following the Story and the patterns in the stories that make up the Story. These stories all repeat the same Story, and Revelation 21,22 is no different. I have seen Revelation 21,22 before in the OT many times. In fact, it is even in Genesis.

There, too, I have seen the knowledge of good and evil. Rather than counseling struggling Christians (of which I am one) with, "you are still fighting the devil, the law and the sin" our approach offers a much more victorious solution. What Christians struggle with is not the Law of Moses, the Old Covenant, the First Death, the Sin, or being "in Adam." What they struggle with is being a new creation in Christ, perfected, made holy and glorified in the Body of Christ while at the same time having the knowledge of Good and Evil.

When Adam ate of this tree, God stated, "now he has become like one of us, knowing good from evil." The process to being made in the image of Christ had begun. Christ had the knowledge of good and evil and one more thing Adam did not have: eternal life. Thus, God, in Genesis, cuts man off from the tree of life, "lest he have eternal life." But, it is eternal life with the Father that Jesus came to give. If the knowing good and evil made Adam more "like" God, then how much more "like" God would he be if given eternal life, which "only God is eternal."? The new creation man in Christ knows good from evil and has eternal life. The man in Adam has only knowledge.

Now, and this is all too painfully brief, the penalty for Adam was what Paul called, "the condemnation" (Rom 5.16). But, for those in Christ "the condemnation" is no more (Rom 8.1). Indeed, the First Death has been annulled for all men, but for those who hate the Light in the new heavens and new earth, their "condemnation remains" (John 3.18), passing into the Second Condemnation for refusing to eat from the Tree of Life. For the Christian, though, the struggle in the age to come are not because of law, sin and death. It is because he has the knowledge of good and evil. His struggle is not with satan and the first death, but with knowledge. It is with knowledge, applied by the Spirit, that a solution to the struggle can be remedied. I struggle with the knowledge of evil in that I have experienced evil thoughts and did them. This can become a habit. Habits are hard to break. But this is hardly because I am a slave to sin! Such categories are to be rejected. If I am still subjected to the devil, then perhaps exorcism is legitimate! When it is seen that I am not dealing with gambling demons, drinking demons or lust demons, and that I am dealing with something that I can handle through the knowledge of the Gospel with the help and counsel of my friends, then this self-condemnation loathing should begin to fizzle. I am righteous. I am holy. I have been completely made new and because of this fact, I am going to plow through my struggle with evil.

My failures with evil we may call, "sin". The Law of the fullness of Christ, which is love, is broken. But, for Adam any infraction of breaking the law of the Garden was met with separation, exile, and condemnation. Is that the case today for the Christian? Would Dennis actually suggest that God condemns us the way he condemned Adam? Is this to be repeated and reapplied? Some Christians have this view, and it is very, very sad. With Adam, God removed him from his presence. With us, because we are made holy and glorified in the Body of Christ, God says, "come here, Son, Daughter. Why do you think the need to run away from me? I do not condemn you. I love you. That's what hurts right now. The love and perfection I have wonderfully bestowed upon you and the glory I have given to you by grace is what hurts you in your heart when you lose occasionally to evil thoughts. But know this! I do not condemn you. Your pain should cause you to come to me, see my grace and my face. Here, now, let me wipe away those tears and put a smile on your face." Dennis' view, nor any other Christian eschatology can offer such a picture of God because he is still, somehow, the God afar off.

[1] http://preteristarchive.com/Preterist-Idealism/dennis-todd_06-03.html

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Free From Churchainty and how good it feels!!!

2008-10-08T04:08:00.000-07:00

To bewitched means to go back to something that you was set free from. We know why Paul told them about being foolish. No more works of the law, it is now by faith so what happen to these people. Like today when your "free" from the bondage of "churchainty" people who are not free don't understand how you go on without it that is churchainty. What is churchainty is the same as the law dead works. Trying to false something as truth with many nonspiritual points. People who are in this place call it churchainty and have not left "yet" these things and maybe never will leave them. Why because they believe them to be bibical teachings better know as the traditions of men. As you can read you can see i didn't say traditons of Jesus,Paul,Peter,James,etc,etc. This is why I'm writing this people about this "bewitched into" the traditions of men. We are in the everlasting covenant people so we need to get it strait now that we are "free" from churchainty. To start off with sometimes i get upset then other times i'm sad about it. Why because churchainty has "no substances" behind it. Let me name a few here that churchanity people who are in many ways like the Jews of Jesus day. 1 They do things and say things to make people scared if they don't do them there way like the Jews. Lets start of with the biggest of them all you must "find" you a building aka church building or should i say a house church. The bible never taught a building calling it a "church building" or house church. But it was "house to house" not one "central place" like a church building concept. Why is because what did Jesus say in John,4:20 to the women. Frist she tried to put words in his mouth, our fathers "worshiped" in this mountain: and ye say that in Jerusalem is the "place" where men ought to worship. Wow is this what we here today of course it is where do you go to, where is the "place" of your worship. Lets check out what Jesus answer is to you people today and her back then. John, 4:21 Jesus saith unto her Women, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither "in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father" John, 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. So what was Jesus answer to that women was NO "place" is the place of worship. Let me add some back up to this is Acts, 7:48 to 51 it wasn't about the "place" anymore. We are the temple now 1 Cor, 3:16, 2 Cor, 6:16. So trying to "sing" when David said let us go into the house of the Lord it's not for today's body. The other one is you need a covering there is no bible context for this. Another thing is that they need to feed you this makes me laugh in our day. Do you not have a bible maybe two or three of them. Babes in Christ is one thing or discipleship of someone is different. Then they still must grow up in the word from their "own" bible. Who "feeds" them the person who says we need this covering thing. When do they stop feeding of who ever that might be? These bewitch tactics are what they do in churchainty like the Jews to try to bring people back into this bondage to churchainty. Just because somebody been doing something so long that doesn't "mean" God is behind it like churchainty. The sad thing is that people who are not saved,born again attached them selves to this churchainty. Thinking they are with God because of this attachedment to this traditions of men.

The Real Remnant / Elect of God are Who and When!!!

2008-09-24T14:23:00.000-07:00

The Reason I decided to write on this subject is because there is only one remnant/elect of God. I know that many believe in this today's teaching they called them selves the elect of God. But does the bible called them the elect of God today? Now like always we "must" start from the old testament and work up to the new testament. So who was called God's remnant first was it the descendant of Israel or the Gentiles? Lets take a look at the word remnant what it means. In the Hebrew is 8300 which reads sariyd, a survivor,alive,left,remain(ing)remnant,rest. Now lets look at the the word elect in the old testament which is 972 bachiyr select-choose,chosen one, elect. First lets look at the "remnant" in the bible and who it was. The main one is "Isaiah, 45:4" Isaiah,1:9,Isaiah,10:20 to 22,Isaiah,11:11,Jeremiah,6:9. The point is that they were the remnant of Israel. Not a gentiles remnant in our day. Now the "elect" of the old testament 1 Chronicles,16:13, Psalm,89:3, Psalm,106:23, Isaiah,42:1,65:9,65:15. Are we getting the point of His remnant/Elect of the old testament. They were the chosen of Israel or "certain people" chosen for a work for God. Not some people walking around calling themselves the elect/chosen today. In the first century the people were called 1 Peter,2:9 But "ye" are a chosen "generation"
Now the problems start with the new testament when these people start quoting everything in the new, to support this teaching that there are the elect of the today. The problem is that Isaiah,45:4 For Jacob my servant's sake, and "Israel mine elect", I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not know me. Also let me used Isaiah,46:3 Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all the "remnant" 7611 in the Hebrew, of the house of Isreal. In the New testament we have the remnant/elect left over of Isreal from the old. These people chosen to fulfilled all things that were written. The Gentiles that were "grafted in" where part of that chosen generation along with the remnant in Romans,9:27 Isaiah also crieth concerning "Israel" though the number of the children of Isreal be as the sand of the sea, a "remnant shall be saved" So in New Testament the remnant/elect is from old testament. Now the verses in the new we start out with Matthew, 24:4, 24:31, Mark,13:20,22,27 Luke, 18:7, Romans, 8:33,Romans,9:27 with Isaiah,10:22, Romans 11:1,11:5, Key verse is "11:7 what then Iseal hath not obtained that which he seeketh for but the "election"1589 Greek hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded. Who was blinded? Read Romans,11:11 to 15. Then in Romans, 11:25,26 the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. Romans,11:26 and so all Isreal shall be saved the key is as it is written there shall come out of Zion the Deliver and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. Romans,11:27 For this is my "covenant" unto them who? when I shall take away their sins. Romans,11:28 As concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the "election" the are beloved for the father's sakes. Well were do we stand now in the new testament as believer's today. Your faith in Christ is were you stand,but you could not have
been that chosen generation 2oooyrs ago. How could you be that? This were we stand now is Ephesians,3:21 unto him be the glory in the "church" by Christ Jesus throughout all ages world without end Amen!!

Why do you people wrestle with "this" and fight against it !!

2008-09-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

Thought 1, is Psalms:56:4 In God I will praise his "word" in God I have put my trust: I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.

Thought 2, is Matthew:13:51 "Jesus" saith unto"them", have you understood "all" these things "they" say unto Him "YES" Lord.

Thought 3, is why people can't and will not understand is because of what? What is blocking the understanding? Thank God for people who did there study on things like J.E. Gautier Jr praise God for you brother. Hopefully it will help those who are looking to "understand" in our day. Whoever that may be so they can say like them "yes" we got it now!!

The Domino Effect of Matthew 16:27

J. E. Gautier Jr.

"Obviously the full preterists have no desire to deviate from Scripture. They bear the burden in this controversy of showing that creedal orthodoxy has been wrong at crucial points of eschatological understanding."(The Last Days According to Jesus, RC Sproul, pp.156-157)

R.C. Sproul is not a full preterist. When asked why, his response, "The Resurrection". Yet, at the1999 Ligonier Conference, in his introductory lesson, "Last Days Madness" he assigned Matthew 16:27 and 28 to AD 70. In the past, many have tried to detach verse 27, from the time-frame statement of verse 28. Or they say, it was His Transfiguration. These attempts have fallen short. Giving up Matthew 16:27 to "what happened in AD 70" is huge! The resultant "domino effect" cannot be overstated. Consequently, Mr. Sproul has "given away the farm"!

The Effect of Sproul’s Concession

Isn't Matthew 16:27, speaking of the same Resurrection and Judgment scene as Revelation 20:12-13, and 22:12?

Mtt. 16:27 "...and then He will reward each according to his work."
Rev. 20:12 "...And the dead were judged according to their works..."
Rev. 20:13 "...And they were judged, each one according to his works."
Rev. 22:12 "And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work."

Take a look at Matthew 16:27 (Gr. mello) alongside Revelation 22:12

"For the Son of Man is about to come...and then He will reward each according to his works." (Mtt.16:27)

"And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work." (Rev.22:12)

Isn’t it also when He would separate the sheep from the goats? (what does this do to the "splitting" of the Olivet Discourse?)

Matthew 16:27-28 "For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. 28 Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."

Matthew 25:31-34 "When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, (Joel 3:2) and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

It’s also found in Matthew 24:30-31? Which Ken Gentry and R.C. Sproul posit at AD 70.

Matthew 16:27 "For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels..."

Matthew 24:30-31 "...the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."

Doesn’t Matthew 24:30-31, then determine that I Thessalonians 4:16, was also fulfilled by AD 70?

Matthew 24:30-31 "...the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect (His wheat, Mtt.3:12; 13:38; His sheep, Mtt.25:32) from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."

I Thessalonians 4:16 "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first."

And if I Thessalonians 4:16, then I Corinthians 15:52.

I Thessalonians 4:16 "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first."

I Corinthians 15:52 "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised..."

To Fulfill All Things

Jesus said that "all things" that had been written in the Law and by the Prophets would be completely fulfilled. By when?

Luke 21:20, 22 "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near...For these are the days of vengeance,(Is.61:2; 63:4) that all things which are written may be fulfilled."

Matthew 5:17-18 "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, (Is.51:6; Heb.8:13) one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled."

Luke 24:44-45 "He said to them, ‘These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.’ And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures."

Revelation 17:17 "For God has put it into their hearts to fulfill His purpose, to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled."

In The Days of Vengeance, David Chilton writes this about Revelation 17:17,

"The war between Christ and the Beast, culminating in the desolation of the Harlot, took place in the fulfillment of God’s announcements through His prophets. The curses of the Covenant (Deut. 28) were executed on Israel through the Beast and the ten horns. They were the instruments of God’s wrath, as Christ foretold in His discourse on the Mount of Olives. During these horrifying ‘days of vengeance,’ He said, all things that were written would be fulfilled (Luke 21:22). Vision and prophecy would be sealed and completed in the destruction of the old world order (Dan. 9:24)." p.442

Christ’s Coming would mean the end for the types and shadows of the Old Covenant. Not in the destruction or destroying of them, but in their fulfillment.

Isaiah 51:5-8 "My righteousness is near, My salvation has gone forth, And My arms will judge the peoples... 6 For the heavens will vanish away like smoke, The earth will grow old like a garment... (Heb.1:11; 8:13) 8 But My righteousness will be forever, And My salvation from generation to generation."

Matthew 9:16-17 "No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. 17 Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved."

"Do not think that I came to destroy... I did not come to destroy but to fulfill."

The Passing of Heaven and Earth

By the time of Jerusalem’s desolation by Titus and the Roman armies, the Law and Prophets would be fulfilled. And heaven and earth would have passed away (Mtt.5:17-18). But it couldn’t have been the literal Heaven and planet Earth that Jesus was speaking of. How could it? We know that the Law with its sacrificial system was completed in Christ (Heb.10:1,14) and has passed away. So to what "heaven and earth" was Jesus referring?

Isaiah 51:16 "That I may plant the heavens, Lay the foundations of the earth, And say to Zion, ' You are My people.' "

Revelation 20:11; 21:1 "Then I saw the great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. 21:1 Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away."

Hebrews 10:9 "...then He said, ' Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.' He takes away the first that He may establish the second."

Isaiah 51:6 "For the heavens will vanish away like smoke, The earth will grow old like a garment."

Hebrews 8:13 "In that He says, ' A new covenant,' He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away."

See "Dr. John Owens’ sermon on, New Heavens and Earth"

The Days of Vengeance

Luke 4:16-21 "So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. 17 And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: 18 ‘The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; 19 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD." 20 Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. 21 And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

Why did Jesus quit reading and close the Scriptures where He did? The very next line found in the Isaiah passage (Is 61:1-2) says, "And the day of vengeance of our God." Why didn’t Jesus continue reading? Could it be, because "the day of vengeance" had not yet been fulfilled in their hearing on that day?

Concerning Isaiah 61, the New Geneva Study Bible is quick to note:

"day of vengeance. Jesus closed the book before reading this portion of Isaiah’s oracle (Luke 4:18-20). The time of healing belongs to His first coming; the time of judgment to the second (I Thess. 1:10) "

The New Geneva Study Bible, of which Mr. Sproul is the General Editor, assigns the "day of vengeance" to "the time of judgment" at Christ’s "second" Coming! Just ONE Second Coming not TWO!

So, if we apply the NGSB’s number of Second Comings (ONE), then, according to Jesus’ own words, when would it occur? (following this pattern the NGSB must also posit I Thess. 1:10 at AD 70)

Luke 21:20, 22 "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near...For these are the days of vengeance."

Honestly, didn’t the Prophets speak of only ONE Second Coming? Hasn’t the New Testament always referred to just ONE parousia? It did before we "saw" the time statements! What happened? Was the Bible re-written while we weren’t looking, and now there’s TWO Second Comings of the Son of Man?!?!

So, by the time the "first" heaven and earth, (Old Covenant / Law and Prophets) had "vanished away"; per Christ’s words, the following passages must have been fulfilled.

Isaiah 62:11-12; 63:4 "Indeed the LORD has proclaimed To the end of the world: ' Say to the daughter of Zion, ' Surely your salvation is coming; Behold, His reward is with Him, (Mtt.16:27; Rev.22:12) And His work before Him.' ' And they shall call them The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord... 63:4 For the day of vengeance (Lk.21:22) is in My heart, And the year of My redeemed has come."

Psalm 62:12 "Also to You, O Lord, belongs mercy; For You render to each one according to his work."

Proverbs 24:12 "If you say, ' Surely we did not know this,' Does not He who weighs the hearts consider it? He who keeps your soul, does He not know it? And will He not render to each man according to his deeds?"

Paul taught the first-century Christians in Rome and Corinth this same message:

Romans 2:5-9 "But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who ' will render to each one according to his deeds': eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness - indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil..." (BTW- Paul is quoting from the O.T. here)

I Corinthians 3:11-15 "For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward (Is.62:11; Mtt.16:27; Rev.22:12). If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire."

Malachi 3:2-3; 4:1 "But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand (Rev.6:17) when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire...He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; 4:1 For behold, the day is coming, Burning like an oven, And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up."

Daniel 12:10 "Many shall be purified, made white, and refined, but the wicked shall do wickedly; and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand."

Remember, Malachi and Daniel are Old Testament Prophets. And Jesus said, that He had come to fulfill the Prophets. And that "all" these things would be fulfilled by...

The Day of the Lord

Malachi 4:5 "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord."

Matthew 11:13-14 "For all of the prophets and law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who is to come."

How many "day(s) of the Lord" did Malachi prophesy of ? Is that ONE New Testament "day of the Lord", still not here, 2,000 years after John the Baptist / Elijah had "prepared the way of the LORD and made His paths straight"? How many "Day" does Paul speak of ? How many "great and dreadful day of the Lord" does the New Testament refer? You can’t even ask the question without improper grammar!

Malachi 4:1 " 'And the day which is coming shall burn them up,' Says the LORD of hosts, ' That will leave them neither root nor branch.' "

Luke 13:6-9 "He also spoke this parable: ' A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ' Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?' 8 But he answered and said to him,' Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. 9 And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.' "

Matthew 3:1-12 "In those days John the Baptist (Elijah JEGjr) came preaching...' Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! ' 7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, ' Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come (Gr. mello-about to be)? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance... 10 And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 12 His winnowing fan is in His hand,("Behold, the Judge is standing at the door!"Js.5:9) and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

Isn’t separating the wheat from the chaff, the same as dividing His sheep from the goats? (Mtt.25:32) How about the gathering of the elect? (Mtt.24:31)

Aren’t all of these also representative of the Harvest at the end of the age?

Matthew 9:36-10:23 "But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. 37 Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. 38 Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.’ 10:1 And when He had called His twelve disciples to Him, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease. 5 These twelve Jesus sent out... 7 ‘And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ 16 Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves... 17 But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues... 22 And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. 23 When they persecute you in this city, flee to another. For assuredly, I say to you, you will not have gone through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes.’"

Christ’s disciples were the "laborers" of the Harvest.
And "the ‘reapers’ are the angels."

Matthew 13:36-43 "...Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field. 37 He answered and said to them: ‘He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. 39 The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels (Mtt.16:27; 24:31). 40 Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire (Mtt.3:1-12), so it will be at the end of this age (Christ was born, lived and died under the Law. His "this age", would be the present age, then existing, when He spoke. The Old Covenant Age.- Gr. aion). 41 The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, 42 and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!’"

Matthew 13:51 "Jesus said to them, ‘Have you understood all these things?’ They said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord.’"

Ken Gentry says that full preterism: "...goes too far by extending valid observations gathered from temporally confined judgment passages (texts including such delimitations as ‘soon’ and ‘at hand’) to passages that are not temporally constrained and that actually prophesy the future advent of Christ." (Tabletalk magazine, January 1999, p.56)

Not once, in the entire New Testament, do we have an instance of a disciple asking for verification from Jesus, as to which "coming" He is now referring! Nowhere do we read of one of them, raising their hand and saying, "Whoa! Wait a minute Jesus, back up, you lost me there! Now, which parousia are you talking about this time?"

Nor is there a time when Christ says, "O.K., I’m no longer speaking of the coming of the Son of Man that directly effects you. I’m now speaking of the one..."

And nowhere in the New Testament do we find an explicit time statement, like those that Gentry demands, "that actually prophesy the future advent of Christ." Not one!

"Have you understood all these things? Yes, Lord."

Joel 2:28-32; 3:1-17 "And it shall come to pass afterward That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and daughters shall prophesy, Your old men shall dream dreams, Your young men shall see visions. 30 And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: Blood and fire and pillars of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD. 32 And it shall come to pass That whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved
3:1 For behold, in those days and at that time, When I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem, 2 I will also gather all nations, (Mtt.25:32) And bring them down to the Valley of Jehosaphat; And I will enter into judgment with them there... 12 Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehosaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. 13 Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, go down; For the winepress is full, The vats overflow- For their wickedness is great. 14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision. 15 The sun and moon will grow dark, And the stars will diminish their brightness. 16 The LORD also will roar from Zion, And utter His voice from Jerusalem; The heavens and earth will shake; (Lk.21:26) But the LORD will be a shelter for His people, And the strength of the children of Israel. 17 So you shall know that I am the LORD your God, Dwelling in Zion My holy mountain. Then Jerusalem shall be holy, And no aliens shall ever pass through her again." (see Eph.2:12-13,19-22)

Revelation 14:1-20 "Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud sat One like the Son of Man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. 15 And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, ‘Thrust in Your sickle and reap, for the time has come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.’ 16 So He who sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped. 17 Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. 18 And another angel came out from the altar, who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, ‘Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.’ 19 So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. 20 And the winepress was trampled outside the city..." (see also Isaiah 5)

Revelation 19:11-16 "Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter.’ He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS."

Resurrection and Judgment

"I share Gentry’s concerns about full preterism, particularly on such issues as the consummation of the kingdom and the resurrection of the dead."(Last Days... Sproul p.158)

For all the same reasons, the Resurrection and Judgment scene of Daniel 12, which cannot be taken out of its obvious AD 70 context, must have been realized by the ONE New Testament, "Day of the Lord".

Matthew 24:15,21 "Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet...(Dan.11:31;12:11) 21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be."

Daniel 12:1 "And there shall be a time of trouble, Such as never was since there was a nation, Even to that time."

Daniel 12:1-2 "And at that time (Dan.12:1-time of trouble, Mtt.24:21-great trib.) your people shall be delivered, Every one who is found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt."

Revelation 20:12-15 "And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered (Dan.12:1-at that time your people shall be delivered) up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each according to his works."

John 5:28-29 "Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming ("...even now...it is the last hour." I John 1:18) in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth - those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation."

The Kingdom of Heaven

In his book, The Last Days According to Jesus, R.C. Sproul states: "If the book of Revelation was written after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, it seems strange that John would be silent about these cataclysmic events. Granted this is an argument from silence, but the silence is deafening. Not only does Revelation not mention the temple's destruction as a past event, it frequently refers to the temple as still standing. This is seen clearly in Revelation 11 ...Gentry gives impressive evidence to support this conclusion." pp.147-149

Revelation 11:1 "Then I was given a reed like a measuring rod. And the angel stood, saying, "Rise and measure the temple of God, the altar, and those who worship there."

So, both Sproul and Gentry use Revelation 11:1, as an internal proof for a pre - AD 70 dating. Yet, just like Chapter 20, the content of Chapter 11 assaults the futurist paradigm. Once again, they find themselves forced to jettison their preterist approach.

In his book, Overcoming Sproul's Resurrection Obstacles, Daniel E. Harden shows that Rev.11:15, was actually prophesied in Daniel 7.

"The last trumpet sounded in A.D. 70. Revelation is a book of judgment against the old covenant and of blessings for the new covenant. Sproul in fact agrees with this. Rev. 11 is imbedded in the heart of this prophecy, which is fulfilled at A.D. 70." p. 93

Rev. 11:15 "The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, (Mtt.24:31; I Thess.4:16; I Cor.15:52) and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: ' The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever."

Daniel 7:14, 18, 27 "Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, Which shall not pass away, And His kingdom the one Which shall not be destroyed. 18 But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever. 27 Then the kingdom and dominion, And the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, Shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And all dominions shall serve and obey Him."

Isn’t the book of Revelation, the prophecy of "the things which must shortly take place...for the time is at hand"? Old Testament prophecies seeing there fulfillment "shortly" after its writing. And didn’t Jesus Himself say that, "all things which were written" would be fulfilled by that time?

"I share Gentry’s concerns about full preterism, particularly on such issues as the consummation of the kingdom and the resurrection of the dead." (Last Days... Sproul p.158)

I’m sorry, but in those two passages, Revelation 11, and Daniel 7, I just don’t see a future-to-us "consummation of the kingdom". How many kingdoms are there? 2,000 years ago the kingdom of heaven was at hand. Didn’t it come, like He promised?

Luke 1:30-33 "Then the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. 33 And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end."

Luke’s account of the Olivet Discourse, equates the "coming of the Son of Man" in AD 70, with the arrival of "the kingdom of God"!

Luke 21:20-32 "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near. 22 For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. 23 For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people. 26 ...the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken (Joel 3:16). 27 Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near. 31 ...when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near. 32 Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place.

The Coming of the Son of Man would bring in the kingdom of God, not end it! There are no verses stating an end to the kingdom. Just the opposite!

"Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."

"...and of His kingdom there will be no end."

Resurrection and Judgment - part 2

Even though they use Revelation 11, for support of their position (11:1). R.C. Sproul and Ken Gentry, also postpone portions of the very same Chapter, which conflict with their position.

Isn't the Resurrection and Judgment scene of Revelation Chapter 11, the same as Revelation 20, and Daniel 12?

Revelation 11:18 "The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, And the time of the dead, that they should be judged, (Dan.12:2; Rev.20:11-15) And that You should reward (Mtt.16:27; Rev.20:12-13, 22:12) Your servants the prophets and the saints, And those who fear Your name, small and great, (Rev.20:12, 19:18) And should destroy those who destroy the earth."

Daniel 12:4, 7, 11 "...seal the book until the time of the end... 7 ...when the power of the holy people has been completely shattered... 11 ...the time that the daily sacrifice is taken away, and the abomination of desolation (Mtt.24:15) is set up..."

Hebrews 9:8-9 "...the Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the Holiest of All was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was still standing. 9 It was symbolic for the present time..."

Revelation 11:18-19 "...the time of the dead that they should be judged, and that You should reward Your servants... 19 Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple."

Where Righteousness Dwells

The Prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah, spoke of the days when the "symbolic", "first tabernacle" would be gone, thereby making possible the opening of the True "temple of God" which is in heaven. And His tabernacle, the holy city, New Jerusalem.

Ezekiel 37:24-28 "David My servant shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd... 25 Then they shall dwell in the land that I have given to Jacob My servant, where your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell there, they, their children, and their children’s children, forever; and My servant David shall be their prince forever. 26 Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them and multiply them, and it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; I will establish them and multiply them, and I will set My sanctuary in their midst forevermore. 27 My tabernacle also shall be with them; indeed I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 28 The nations also will know that I, the LORD, sanctify Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forevermore."

Revelation 21:3 "And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God."

Isaiah 60:19-22 "The sun shall no longer be your light by day, Nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you; But the LORD will be to you an everlasting light, And your God your glory. 20 Your sun shall no longer go down, Nor shall your moon withdraw itself; For the LORD will be your everlasting light, And the days of your mourning shall be ended. 21 Also your people shall all be righteous; They shall inherit the land forever, The branch of My planting, The work of My hands, That I may be glorified. 22 A little one shall become a thousand, And a small one a strong nation. I, the LORD, will hasten it in its time."

Revelation 21:3-5,23-24,27; 22:5,17 " ‘...God Himself will be with them and be their God, 4 And God will wipe every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’ 5 Then He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new’ 23 The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. 24 And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light... 27 But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. 22:5 There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever. 17 ...And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take of the water of life freely."

Hosea 2:21-23 " 'It shall come to pass in that day That I will answer,' says the LORD; 'I will answer the heavens, And they shall answer the earth. The earth shall answer With grain, with new wine, And with oil; They shall answer Jezreel. Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth ("Lay the foundations of the earth" Is. 51:16), And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; Then I will say to those who were not My people 'You are My people!' And they shall say, 'You are my God!' " (see also Roms. 9:24-25)

Isaiah 65:15,17 "For the Lord God will slay you, And call His servants by another name... 17 For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; And the former shall not be remembered or come to mind." (NGSB- "servants by another name," Acts11:26)

Acts 11:26 "And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch."

II Peter 3:1-2,13 "Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle (in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder), 2 that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior... 13 Nevertheless we (Christians) according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells."

Hebrews 12:22-28 "But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, 23 to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven... 24 to Jesus the Mediator of the New covenant... 25 ...Him who speaks from heaven, 26 whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, ‘Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.’ 27 Now this, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made , that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. 28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken..." (see Joel 3:16, Lk.21:26)

When did God "call His servants by another name"? When would God "create new heavens and a new earth"? When did they "receive" the kingdom? Peter and the first-century Christians were looking for the promised "new heavens and new earth." They would not be disappointed. By AD 70, all that had been written would be fulfilled.

Revelation 20:11, John writes, "the heaven and the earth fled away. And there was found no place for them." (Old Covenant Age) In Revelation 21:1, He writes, "Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth (New Covenant Age), for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away."

What major eschatological event, do we find sandwiched between the passing of the OLD (Rev.20:11) and the dawning of the NEW (Rev. 21:1) ?

Revelation 20:11-(16)* "Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face THE EARTH AND THE HEAVEN FLED AWAY. AND THERE WAS FOUND NO PLACE FOR THEM. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire. NOW I SAW A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH, FOR THE FIRST HEAVEN AND THE FIRST EARTH HAD PASSED AWAY." (emphasis mine)

* There is no Revelation 20:16. But there should be! The Chapter division (21:1), where it has been placed, has made this invisible to us.

The partial preterist wants to pick and choose which eschatological events they will take out of "the things which must shortly take place...for the time is at hand" sandwich of the Beginning of Revelation (1:1,3) and the End (22:6,10). And they also want to take the Resurrection out of this even "tighter" sandwich formed between the "Old" and "New" Covenants! Revelation 20:11-(16)* 21:1

There is no way of getting around it! Everything that the Old Testament Prophets had prophesied were fulfilled in that first-century generation of Christians. Just as Jesus said they would.

In assigning Matthew 16:27 to AD 70, Mr. Sproul has become inconsistent with partial preterism. And consistent with Scripture.

W. W. J. D. ?

When Was Jesus Due?

There is certainly a feeling, "an expectation of those things which are coming on the earth", that pervades the New Testament Scriptures. They were on the brink of a truly unique and fantastic time in world history. They lived in a period which will never be repeated. A "time of the end." And a time for "the New."

It had been over four hundred years, since God, through His prophet Malachi had promised, "I will send you Elijah the prophet..." They knew that Elijah must proceed before the Christ.

Matthew 17:10,12 "And His disciples asked Him, saying, ‘Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?’ "But I say to you that Elijah has come already, and they did not know him..."

Most likely, they understood the timing of Daniel’s 70 weeks. Therefore, they also understood the timing of the Messiah’s arrival. This is the very reason the People could be deceived by false Christs. They understood the timing, but not the nature.

Matthew 21:41-45 "While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42 saying, ‘What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?’ They said to Him, ‘The Son of David,’ 43 He said to them, ‘How then does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord ’, saying: 44 ‘The LORD said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool’? 45 ‘If David then calls Him ‘Lord’, how is He his Son?’ 46 And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore."

I Corinthians 2:7-8 "But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, 8 which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory."

They understood the timing, but not the nature.

Why has the Church, for two thousand years taught that, Christ’s Coming is still in OUR future? In Chapter 13 of his book, THE MESSIAH’S RETURN, Delayed? Fulfilled? or Double-Fulfillment?, Timothy A. James explains:

"The belief in the failure of Christ’s prophecies stem from the attempts of a Gentile- dominated church after A.D. 70 trying to understand Jewish concepts. This lack of understanding should not amaze us, for most of the Jewish world misunderstood the prophecies of His first coming, so why should we expect any difference in recognition of His second coming by Gentile interpreters? The silence of the period after the destruction was a direct result of the downfall and captivity of the Jewish Nation. Along with its end the Jewish Christians were scattered and became almost lost to history. If any literature was written by them after the fall of Jerusalem that taught the return of Christ in that event, there is good reason to believe that it was suppressed or beyond the understanding of the dominant Gentile church (see E. Hampden-Cook’s section in Appendix I). Careful study of Rabbinic sources shows that the remnant of the Jewish nation actively destroyed all apocalyptic works speaking of an imminent end after A.D. 70 because of its embarrassment to them. Hence, suppression of Jewish/Christian material referring to fulfilled imminence was a most likely target of this group also. Another factor related to this is N. B. Stonehouse’s mention of a definite division in the church after A.D. 70. (Apocalypse, p.139f). Syrian Christianity was isolated from the Greek world because of its Aramaic language. This barrier caused a more pure line of understanding and tradition. Therefore, the Greek church considered the Syrian church "heretical" because they rejected the Greek’s sensual chiliasm and held to a spiritual/figurative understanding of Jewish/Christian apocalyptic. This distaste for sensual chiliasm was a major factor in their total rejection of the Apocalypse in the early Syrian texts and canon. It wasn’t till later that Revelation was added, and then with a heading that placed its date in reign of Nero, before the A.D. 70 event.

Interpretation of Scripture by the Gentile-dominated church was caught up in the idea of a physical return and a literal interpretation of the very figurative Jewish apocalyptic language found in the book of Revelation and other OT & NT prophecies. Yet, even in the early church, Christ’s return was seen by the Jewish Christians to be a spiritual change in the authority of the Kingdom. Such can be seen in the "jumping the gun" of the early church in the teaching that the Lord had come before A.D. 70, (II Thess. 2:1-2). This premature teaching was dangerous to the early church since it implied an acceptance of the Temple cultus, thus putting Christianity in the category of just a new sect of Judaism, rather than the fulfillment of the whole thing.

The fact that they believed the Lord had come before A.D. 70 shows that they interpreted His return as a spiritual coming in the early church. Even though they were premature, it only supports our early research that they expected His return just as He said, in that generation.

There are only two main verses that have loosely been used to assume a physical return of Christ by the Greek-dominated church. The first is Acts 1:9-11 (the Ascension), "he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight," after this the two angels reassured the disciples saying, "this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven." (emphasis mine, tj.) The emphasis here is not on the transfigured form, but on the manner in which he ascended and would return, "in a cloud." This event was a reaffirmation of Jesus’ being the apocalyptic "Son of Man" spoken of in Daniel and the Gospels. That he, "the Son of Man," came with the clouds of heaven (Daniel 7:13), is later emphatically stated to be fulfilled in His return, in numerous places (Matt.16:27f; 24:30; Mark 13:26; and Luke 21:27).

The second verse under consideration is Revelation 1:7, "Behold, he cometh in the clouds and every eye shall see him, every one which pierced him: and all the kindred of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen." Here one finds the same apocalyptic "Son of Man" imagery regarding His "coming in the clouds." The language of the text shows that literally, those that would see him were even who had "pierced him", namely the Jews (Acts 2:23,36; 5:30). In His parousia in judgment on the Jewish theocracy, those that had rejected Him would now "see" the truth of Jesus’ claims and their error, i.e. a nationalistic expectation of the Kingdom (Matthew 26:64). Truly, upon a close investigation of the subject, there are not any verses in the New Testament that point to any other manner of coming other than a spiritual parousia of Christ in a judgment of God’s enemies at the redemptive-historical end-time of the Old Covenant system. In fulfilling this event, the bondage of the non-occurrence theory is vanquished."

Paul before Felix - "...thus I worship the ancestral God, believing all the things according to the law and the things in the prophets having been written, having hope toward - God, which these [them]selves expect, a resurrection to be about to be both of just and of unjust. Acts 24:14-15 (The Interlinear NASB-NIV)

"I solemnly witness before - God and Christ Jesus, the [one] being about to judge living [ones] and dead, both [by] the appearance of him and [by] the kingdom of him" II Timothy 4:1 (The Interlinear NASB-NIV)

"For yet a little while,
And He who is coming will come and will not tarry."
Hebrews 10:37

"...Surely I am coming quickly."
Revelation 22:20

Articles

Wake up and smell the wrong traditions of chruch buildings/worshipers

2008-08-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

Why Believers Should Not Attend “Church”

Unknown

Here are four main points that will be covered in this article

1. "Worship" is a service, not a ritual. Those who "attend church" and imitate Old Testament worship patterns generally neglect the New Testament commands to exhort one another daily (Hebrews 3:13; 10:24-25).

2. The Old Testament looks forward to the Age in which all men would worship God everywhere, and not just in that "place which the LORD your God shall choose" (Deuteronomy 12:11). The New Covenant priesthood is decentralized and universalized, not restricted to the "ordained" and the church traditions of men.

3. Exhortation is conversational, not sermonic. Preaching means dialogue, not a monologue. Rather than being equipped by New Testament-style exhortation and service, church-goers can become impotent and dependent upon a credentialed "professional" who engages in statism.

4. Fellowship is best accomplished in homes, not in pews. In "church" the "dignity" of priestly pomp and "worship" is substituted for the personal, house-to-house communion pictured in the Scriptures (Acts 2:46). A military-style symbol of a meal, and a view of the back of someone's head, is substituted for a genuine meal and a time of face-to-face fellowship.

These four points are very plainly at odds with most every church in the country. But the point is not simply to be different, nor to insult all other churches. The purpose is to analyze apparently "obvious" traditions in the light of the Scriptures (Acts 17:11).

What is "Worship"?

The basic meaning of the word "worship" is service. To "worship" God is to put every area of one's life under the His Law. Worship in the generic sense is the devotion we owe to God in the whole of life. God is sovereign, He is Lord, having sovereignty over us and propriety in us, and therefore in all that we do we owe subjection to him, devotion to His revealed will, obedience to His commandments. There is no area of life where the injunction does not apply (1 Corinthians 10:31). In view of the lordship of Christ as Mediator, all of life comes under His dominion (Colossians 3:23,24).

In the Old Testament there was also a more specific usage for "worship," namely, the observance of the ceremonial rituals. These ritual observances typified worship in every area of life. Animal sacrifice, the burning of incense, attendance at temple, and other rigors were imposed on the people of Israel, and were but shadows of the worship of the New Covenant.

Jesus spoke of the New Covenant form of worship in John 4. The woman at the well, having been confronted with the ethical demands of the Lord Jesus (regarding her adulterous life), attempts a "doctrinal" diversion: she asks Jesus about "worship." Putting words in Jesus' mouth, she claims that worship occurs in a certain place (John 4:20). Jesus denies that worship occurs in any place, and says, "true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth" (John 4:21-24).

In the common, specific sense, "worship" means attending to the ceremonial requirements of the Old Covenant, going to a certain place. But these acts only symbolized true "worship," and were necessary to prod a Spiritless people to that worship which means obedience to God in every area of life, in Spirit and in Truth.

Can you find one occurrence in the New Testament books of "worship" in the ceremonial/specific sense (going to a specific place to worship) being required of bondservants of Christ? The answer is no. Or are the occurrences of "worship" speaking of obedience in every area of life? The answer is yes. Do any of the Greek words used for "worship" occur in any sense requiring bondservants of Christ to go to Jerusalem, or to any specific "place" to "worship" God? No, they do not. Would we expect centralized ceremonial "worship" to be required today in light of the fact that Jews were doing this because the spirit of God was not yet given them (John 7:39)? In light of the fact that in the Old Testament, God only dwelt in temples made with hands because the Spirit was not yet inside of the people, but today, God says He does not dwell in temples made with hands, because the Spirit of God dwells within our bodies? If you "attend church," have you been trained to search the Scriptures to find the answers to such questions as these (Acts 17:11), or do you need to ask your "minister or elder"?

The Enduring Old Testament Law

The Mosaic law commanded God's people to gather for worship and to hear God's Word (Deuteronomy 12:5-12; 31:11-12). The Old Testament required travel to a centralized location to hear a special priesthood. The reason is that the Spirit was not yet given to the people under the Old Covenant, and since they had no Spirit to communicate with God, they had to go to a physical building and hear a physical priest to understand what God's Word was. Do we still have to hear God's Word from a special priesthood? Or does the Spirit of God dwell within us today? Compare these commands with Jesus' conversation with the woman at the well (John 4:20-24). Do we still go to Jerusalem? Must we listen to Moses or the priests to hear God's Word?

Obviously, we do not "bring an offering" or "come before Him" in the same way we did in the Old Covenant. Nor do we "hear God's Word" by going to the typological temple and hearing a priest. Scripture says we are all priests now (1 Peter 2:5,9; Revelation 1:6; 5:10; Isaiah 61:6), and God's Word has gone out through all the world (Romans 1:8; 10:18; Colossians 1:6,23).

Old Covenant believers would be astonished at the scope of publication of God's Word in our day. This is guided by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit Himself. Thus, publishers should labor as priests under God, and see their work as having great and special Spiritual significance.

This massive outpouring of Truth works to enable every believer-priest to know and study God's Word and to proclaim it to his neighbors. And it all takes place outside the walls of institutional churches. In fact, the "church" has historically opposed the free dissemination of Scripture and its exposition. The Roman Catholic Church burned Christians at the stake for doing this.

All of this should be understood as the true Spiritual meaning of the Old Testament prophecies. Joel 2:28 is an example of how the world-wide decentralized spread of the Gospel was spoken of by the Prophets. Similarly did Moses speak, when he prayed that God would make all of His people prophets and preachers (Numbers 11:29). Acts 2:17 is a fulfillment of Joel 2:28, when the Holy Spirit was finally given to His people. So you see, we are all prophets, priests, and kings today (; Isaiah 61:6; 1 Peter 2:5,9; Revelation 1:6; 5:10).

Thus, no building can be said to be the place to worship simply because of the presence of the special "ordained" priests. Every Believer is a Priest. We need not "go to Jerusalem", or to a "temple made with hands" (Acts 7:48; 17:24). This is why, when Jesus died, and confirmed the New Testament, the physical temple was rent in half (Matthew 27:51, Mark 15:38, Luke 23:34). This is why New Testament believers worship "from house to house", in homes (Acts 2:46), and not in temples made with hands.

Does the Bible say Believers must go to a Physical church?

Churches commonly quote Acts 20:7 as a precedent for Church worship, but the whole impression of Acts 20:7 is rather that of a family meeting together in a home than of a modern congregation met in a church. "Family" meaning a group of believers and friends. Is it possible that we may have lost the sense of the congregation as a real family in God?

Psalm 22:22 is also quoted, and it is cited in Hebrews 2:12, as referring to Christ. How does Christ stand in the midst of his congregation and declare His Name? Only in certain buildings at certain times? Matthew 18:20 spells doom for those who would so assert: "For where two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in the midst of them." His Presence with us is through the Comforter, the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17), who fulfills Moses' wish that we could all be prophets and not have to be dependent upon special priests to teach us (1 John 2:27). God's Presence is not localized "in temples made with hands" (Acts 7:48; 17:24). Our body is now the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells within us (1 Corinthians 3:9,16,17; 6:19-20, Ephesians 2:20-22), just like Jesus referred to his own body as a temple (Mark 14:58, John 2:19-21). And as believers exercise dominion over the entire globe, Christ is correspondingly present (Matthew 28:18,20).

Does Scripture require this "special" place of worship in addition to "everywhere"? One of the burdens of the first century was the corrupt worship among the Jews, and scripture says in God's advent, that will be replaced with pure worship among the Gentiles in every place (Malachi 1:11; 3:3-4). Worship would no longer be limited or tied to Jerusalem, or to the outward shadows of the Old Covenant, or to a centralized Church. Because once the Holy Spirit is given, shadows are no longer necessary.

How do we worship God in the New Covenant? Do we need an institutional priesthood? Must we journey to a certain centralized location? Must we "attend church"? It is virtually implied that those who do not "worship" in a certain place (subordinate to a priest) do not believe in "assembling" together, or with any appreciation of the Community we have in Christ. This is false. The question is not, "Are we to 'gather together'"?, but rather "How are we to 'gather together'"?

The Judaizers told believers in Christ that unless they observed the ceremonial requirements of the Old Covenant they weren't being faithful. Their purpose was not to make obedient patriarchs out of the new converts, but to gain power over them (Galatians 2:4).

We should not localize God:

Acts 7:49, "Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest?"

1 Kings 8:27, "…behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?"

What does "Preach" mean?

Believers are to Preach God's Word (2 Timothy 4:2; Acts 20:7-9; 1 Timothy 4:6-16). Also mentioned is "exhort" and "teach" in these verses. Far more significant, however, is the entire notion of "preaching". There were no one-man lectures (monologues) in the early Church until Greek philosophy was imported into the Church. The traveling philosophers (peripatetics) were popular in the Greco-Roman world, and were too easily imitated among Believers. What passes for "preaching" in our day has absolutely no Biblical warrant. Nowhere in the New Testament is there an example of a "sermon" in the Christ's assemblies.

We need to emphasize this point. If the Apostle Paul were invited into one of our meetings and saw only one man give an oration patterned after the Greek philosophers of his day, with absolutely no interaction with the "laymen," Paul would demand to know "What's going on here?" This modern pattern bears no resemblance to the New Testament pattern, although it is unwittingly patterned after ancient Greek itinerant moralists. The "sermon" is an unscriptural tradition, imported from Greco-Roman paganism. Some preachers, of course, fail to meet even the standards of the Greek philosophers. Their "preaching" is pure entertainment.

Acts 20 is used to establish many modern practices of the church, and yet it supports none of them. Consider "preaching."

Comments RKM: The text were added so the reader can see how different translations wrote the verse.

(ALT) Now on the first [day] of the week [i.e. Sunday], the disciples having been gathered together to break bread, Paul began holding a discussion with them, being about to be departing the next day, and he kept prolonging the word [fig., discussion] until midnight.

(ASV) And upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them, intending to depart on the morrow; and prolonged his speech until midnight.

(BBE) And on the first day of the week, when we had come together for the holy meal, Paul gave them a talk, for it was his purpose to go away on the day after; and he went on talking till after the middle of the night.

(CEV) On the first day of the week we met to break bread together. Paul spoke to the people until midnight because he was leaving the next morning.

(ISV) On the first day of the week, when we had met to break bread, Paul began to address the people. Since he intended to leave the next day, he went on speaking until midnight.

(KJV+) And¹¹⁶¹ upon¹⁷²² the³⁵⁸⁸ first³³⁹¹ day of the³⁵⁸⁸ week,⁴⁵²¹ when the³⁵⁸⁸ disciples³¹⁰¹ came together⁴⁸⁶³ to break²⁸⁰⁶ bread,⁷⁴⁰ Paul³⁹⁷² preached¹²⁵⁶ unto them,⁸⁴⁶ ready³¹⁹⁵ to depart¹⁸²⁶ on the³⁵⁸⁸ morrow;¹⁸⁸⁷ and⁵⁰³⁷ continued³⁹⁰⁵ his speech³⁰⁵⁶ until³³⁶⁰ midnight.³³¹⁷

(YLT) And on the first of the week, the disciples having been gathered together to break bread, Paul was discoursing to them, about to depart on the morrow, he was also continuing the discourse till midnight,

The Greek word for "preach" in Acts 20:7,9 is word dialegomai: it's a "dialogue" not a "monologue." Dialegomai means: “to say thoroughly, that is, discuss (in argument or exhortation): - dispute, reason (with), speak.”. It comes from the word "di" which means "a combining form meaning 'two', 'double'." We do not have "dialogue and discussion" in most "churches," and therefore do not obey Acts 20:7. Does the church really believe that Paul gave an uninterrupted lecture -- for twelve hours?!? Dialegomai is also translated as "reasoned" in Acts 17:2, where Paul "reasoned" in the synagogue out of the scriptures. Paul "reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath" (Acts 18:4,19). In church, the preacher doesn't "reason" with anybody, but simply talks with no chance of interaction with those in the audience. Dialegomai is also translated as "disputed" in Acts 17:17, where Paul "disputed he in the synagogue", and in Acts 19:18 where he was "disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God." In Church, the minister or elder does not give anyone the chance to "dispute" or "question" him. Is this biblical?

For now, note the inescapable fact that there simply was no "preaching" or "sermon" as we popularly conceive it today. When we proclaim the Gospel to our neighbor, we engage in "official and professional instruction" as priest-kings of Christ! The gates of hell are assaulted and overcome by our "informal discussion". Modern churches have replaced the discussion and animated conversation of the New Testament with "sermons," an invention of the Greeks, and a man-made tradition.

As a result, I cannot obey the Scriptural commands as cited in 1 Corinthians 14:26,31 when I "attend church"; I cannot edify and prophesy. Neither can I obey 1 Timothy 4:13 and 2 Timothy 4:2 when I "attend church"; I cannot exhort, I cannot "teach", except through hymns (but not of my choosing). Only one person exhorts in a "church"; the whole congregation violates Hebrews 10:24-25, at least when they are "attending church." Perhaps they obey these commands later in the afternoon, when in colloquial discussion they bring all thoughts captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), but certainly not during Church services.

Who is a Minister or a Priest?

While the Apostle could claim to be a "steward of the mysteries of God" (1 Corinthians 4:1), we wonder what Churches mean when they claim the same thing for themselves, after the age of the Apostles, and denying the duty to all other ("non-ordained") believers. Perhaps they dispense mysteries only when speaking ex cathedra. No, surely whenever any believer shares the Word of God with another, he dispenses mysteries in the same sense as the churchmen might legitimately claim for themselves.

It seems that church preachers are sometimes not as interested in exalting the Apostles or the Gospel as much as their own ecclesiastical power. This seems to be a fairly significant issue, one that underlies the issue of preaching and this entire article: The ecclesiocrat works to "mystify" his "office." He wants a "mystique" to surround his position. He seeks not to exalt the Word of God so much as to intimidate and impress the "laity." Many are unable to think of the work of the elder as attainable, practical, or understandable, because it is invested with an aura of mystery. The every-day function of nurturing younger believers and watching over them, concerned for their Spiritual growth, is converted into a high and lofty ecclesiastical "office" resembling an inscrutable, occultic link between god and man. Rather than rooted in Biblical Law and practical competence therein, this ecclesiocentric authority is esoteric, shrouded in mystery.

In the Priesthood of All Believers, all believers can strive to be mature, wise, and Godly. In denominational churches, the "uninitiated" can never be "mysterious." They are qualitatively (not just quantitatively) inferior. "Religion" is thus removed, and the rest of us must read Ann Landers for "practical" guidance the rest of the week.

In sharp contrast to this mentality, the Bible wants us to think of every believer as one who must dispense divine mysteries (Isaiah 61:6; 66:20-23; 1 Peter 2:9). In fact, the "mystery" which was hidden in the Old Covenant is the fact that all men shall be a part of God's Kingdom of priests, and they shall function fully, obediently, and spontaneously (Ephesians 2; Revelation 1:6; 1 Peter 2:5,9; Hebrews 8:8-12) without the rigors of the Old Covenant ceremonial priesthood (Colossians 1:26-27; Ephesians 1:9-10; 3:5-6; Galatians 3:19 - 4:11) and without fear of the principalities and powers which held sway over the nations during the Old Covenant (Revelation 20:1-3). Everyone engages in an extremely significant and special act when they bring the Word of God to bear on a neighbor's problems. The New Testament tells us that this conversation has cosmic significance; the very gates of hell itself are pulled down and Christ's Kingship extended (2 Corinthians 10:4-5; 1 Corinthians 15:24-25). By virtue of our priestly and kingly office, it is an act of official and professional instruction, and yet this shepherding of another believer or this preaching to an unsaved neighbor should be an "ordinary," every-day occurrence. The hocus-pocus of a clerical religionist is not demanded.

The Godly father does not dangle fatherhood over his son's head as an unattainable "mystery." He seeks to display and explain fatherhood, helping his son to become a Godly father. The Godly "Minister or Elder" does not mystify himself or an ecclesiastical position of power. He models a life of service and obedience to Biblical Law in a practical way, demystifying competence and Godliness so that it might be imitated by all (1 Peter 5:1-3).

Conclusion

To say that we are violating Scripture unless we also "attend church" in the building of an ecclesiastical corporation with a credentialed seminary graduate in the spotlight, is simply preposterous, a remnant of Roman Catholic teaching. There is not a shred of evidence to support such an ecclesiastical requirement, and the whole of Scripture seems to go against it. The movement in the Bible is away from ceremony and limited special priesthood, and toward decentralization, an every-believer priesthood, and a return to direct communication with God through His Spirit.

Our failure as believers to implement this truth comes from our friendship with the world, and conformity thereto (Romans 12:1-2; James 4:4). It seems strange to us to think of a household communion. In our culture, Grandparents live in their own house, Aunts and Uncles are likewise separated from their Nieces and Nephews, and it is "trendy" for children to move out of their parents' house as soon as they possibly can. In our day "the Family" has been described as one or two working parents and (maybe) 2.2 children (recently down to 1.8).

If we were to take a first-century believer (or even a modern-day member of a number of non-western cultures) up into an airplane over Southern California, and showed them city after city of single-family dwellings, all packed in like sardines, row after row, with parents in one house, children in another, grandparents in another, aunts and uncles in still another, and the poor and homeless wasting away in the abandoned section of industrial parks and urban ghettoes (where the suburban dwellers have coercively zoned them) our passenger would cry. Then he might become enraged: "This is sick! This is an abomination! I could never have imagined such atomism and selfish isolationism!" Little does he know that even among those houses where parents and children dwell together, it is little more than a motel, with students and commuters simply dropping in to sleep at night. In this land there is no property -- genuine property -- over which fruitful, honest dominion can be exercised unhindered by banks or landlords. It is a nation of slaves. Where in our land is an Abraham, with hundreds of adopted children, hundreds of domestic apprentices, hundreds of the poor and needy receiving shelter, hundreds of illiterate orphans being educated and brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and several generations of Family in blessed contact and harmonious community? Well, if we believe the churchmen, that ideal is clearly unattainable: we live in the New Covenant, and we do not have the Spiritual resources which Abraham had under the Old Covenant. Right?

Does Ephesians 5:19 - 6:24 command anything that cannot be fulfilled in "informal" Family-gatherings? The idea of Family communion is in our (atomistic, self-centered) day rightly ridiculed. We are not Patriarchs; we are children. How we cherish the churchmen, who only require us to "worship" in their church one day each week, and then dismiss us to watch our TV's in isolated silence.

We should always be conscious of Christ's Presence "where two or three are gathered in My Name." Whenever we obey the command to assemble together for praising God, Scripture reading and study, exhortation and comfort, prayer and singing, and remembering the Lord's death in the communal meal, we are clearly engaging in a very special activity.

Remember, the "Church" does not save anybody, only our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ can save us (John 3:17; 10:9, Acts 2:21; 4:12; 15:11; 16:31, Romans 10:9,13).

Name: Janice
Date: Friday, December 01, 2006
Time: 02:22:32 AM

Comments: The word "church" is evil in itself. The word "ekklesia" (called out), is the true Bible word that the apostates translated as "church", which is the ancient word that the pagans used to worship demons in, in a "circle, circe, kirk, church, circle"!

To Much to give up! For the truth!

2008-08-07T09:52:00.000-07:00

I have been saying the same thing about the cost of abandoning "futurism". They are not going to give it up only a few will. The price is to high for truth, no way jack!

By Walt Hibbard,This writer has confronted Christian scholars and laymen who openly display a studied and almost stubborn reluctance to part with the futurist views that they have been taught. The cost of abandoning futurism is high – too high for many scholars and pastors to pay!

Pause for a moment and consider what is involved here. I’ll list just a few things below:

1. Pastor, elder and deacon ordination vows may be placed in jeopardy!

2. Loss of pastoral occupational positions and accompanying family stress!

3. A partial revision of the great ecumenical creeds and confessions!

4. Hundreds of Bible commentaries and study guides needing to be rewritten!

5. Seminaries needing to revise large portions of their curriculum!

6. The man-in-the-pew may feel betrayed at the hands of those he trusted!

So…is it worth it? In the final analysis, it boils down to the question: Does truth really matter more than the things listed above? Does God honor His truth more than outward unity? Could the church have been mistaken on these things for over 1900 years?

Ask yourself this question: Am I safe to continue to ignore these teachings of Jesus and instead embrace the teachings that are not supported by the Word of God? Why would I want to believe something, however traditional it might be, if it did not agree with God’s Holy Word? Do I want to stand with tradition rather than the truth? (John 14:6).

Then look up and lift up "your heads" for "your" redemption draweth near

2008-07-23T20:02:00.000-07:00

Like always first things first the word redemption in Luke 21:28. The word in the webster"s 2 new college dicitornary is #5 is salvation from sin through Christ sacrifice. Huh! here I go trying to explain that Luke was writing under the influence of the holy ghost we do believe that right. Next for Luke to say that "there" not "ours" redemption draweth "near" not "far" is something you have to think about not me. Then to enforce it Jesus gives them a parable from verse 29 to 31 an example to know when it will be at hand when you remember the parable. Verse 31 says when "ye" who see these things come to pass ye that the "kingdom of God" "is" nigh at hand! I believe in the words of Jesus, many believe in the words of there pastor's there word's can't be the same as Jesus on these verses. Then to make things even more understood Jesus says that there "redemption" will happen in that generation "not" race for word generation this makes me say wow. But anyway back to the inspired word says about verse 32. Verily in the English means in truth also with confidence "assuredly." I say unto you who! this generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled. But what is the state of these people today is well you know Jesus didn't mean that. Today we like to take out the words nigh,at hand,all,and put some fulfilled in it, not at and, and not nigh. So they attack the words of Jesus for what ever reason in there own heads about "his" words no way around it people. The point is why tell them not you, or us 2oooyrs later to lift up your heads for your redemption draweth nigh if he didn't so-called didn't mean it.

Like aways when you hear people try to explain away the words of Jesus you say to yourself were did they get this from reading these verses plainly. Luke 21:28 doesn't talk about I believe
he came in judgement ad70. It says there redemption draweth near people which is salvation then ad70. Hebrews 9:28 So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many: and unto them who! that look for him shall appear the second time without sin unto salvation. Also lets look at Romans,13:11 for now "our" their's salvation nearer than when we believed. Do not think for one moment that the them is you and us today taking away the context of luke 21:28. Also lets look in 1 Corinthians 1,7:8, also Philippians 3:20 the philippians were looking for the saviour the Lord Jesus Christ. There are to many verses to write with Luke 21:28to32. My focus is the "redemption draweth near." The problem is with what i hear in our days. Near doesn't mean Far in Jesus words back then because it doesn't mean it now in our times. How can your salvation be near today and there's wasn't think about for a moment. Your salvation has to be far right not near. Also like to point out verse 31 so like wise ye, when ye aka "them" see these things come to pass, know ye that the "kingdom of God is nigh at hand! So what do we have in these 5 verse Jesus telling them all these things were at hand, nigh,in there generation,verily,till "all" be fulfilled. What do have today a misplace gospel from who is the question to ask your self. Don't worry salvation is for you today because of Hebrews,9:28 and He came and fulfilled all of the words he said He would "not some" thank God for that people. So you can look up and say thank you Jesus for keeping your words. BTW Proverbs 13:12 Hope deferred maketh the heart sick but when the "disire cometh" and it did for them it is a tree of life. 2 Peter 3:8 it was for the insurance of those who he was talking to then present tense not 2000yrs later and beyond.

The puzzle doesn't fit people,you must look for something else!!!

2008-07-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

"Did the Transfiguration Fulfill Matthew 16:28?"
Copyright © 2004 by Michael A. Fenemore - Revised: 2004 Jul 24

Speaking to a "crowd…along with his disciples" (Mark 8:34, NIV throughout), Jesus said:

27…the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. 28 I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. (Matt. 16:27-28)

For those Christians who don't believe that Jesus has already come in his kingdom, taking this prediction at face value presents a problem because those who were "standing" there have all died. Many believe the transfiguration account immediately following Matt. 16 provides an adequate solution (Matt. 17:1-9; Mark 9:2-10; Luke 9:28-36). This article presents a test of that interpretation.

The following is a synopsis of the transfiguration as recounted in Matt. 17:1-9:

1. Jesus takes three disciples up a high mountain;
2. Jesus is transfigured (his face shines and his clothes appear white);
3. Moses and Elijah appear;
4. A bright cloud envelopes the disciples;
5. A voice says, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!";
6. Moses and Elijah disappear;
7. Jesus says, "Don't tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead."

What should the disciples have expected to see?

1. "the Son of Man coming in his Father's glory"
2. "angels"
3. Each person being rewarded for what he has done (the judgment)
4. "his kingdom"

At the transfiguration, the Son of Man was there and he was changed to a certain glorified state (Matt. 17:2; Mark 9:3; Luke 9:29). However, strictly speaking, he was not "coming" -- he was already there. Where would he have been coming from? There were no angels present, nor was there any sign of a judgment taking place. In fact, very little in the account could be reasonably related to "his kingdom." If Jesus was thinking of the coming transfiguration event when he made his prediction in Matt. 16:27-28, we must wonder why he painted a picture of his coming in glory in verse 27, listing dramatic details, and then in verse 28, predicted a preview of that event which he knew would lack the very key elements he had just described? What was the point of verse 27? It would be as though Jesus had said this:

1. Here's what it's going to look like when I come in my kingdom;
2. Some standing here will live to see it;
3. When they do, it won't look anything like the way I just said it will look.

Who could ever believe such a ridiculous scenario? Yet that's exactly what the popular explanation for Matt. 16:28 amounts to and millions of Christians have accepted it without question. What else might one have expected to see in connection with "the Son of Man coming in his kingdom?"

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. (1 Thess. 4:16-17)

During the transfiguration, the Lord did not "come down from heaven." There was a command that came out of the cloud, but not necessarily a "loud" command (Matt. 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:34-35). There was no trumpet sound, nor any sign of the dead rising or the rapture. The disciples were enveloped by a cloud, but they were not "caught up…in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." There was much more missing from the transfiguration:

...See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones… (Jude 14b-15a); The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever." (Rev. 11:15)

There was no sign of the "thousands upon thousands of his holy ones" and the voice in the cloud said nothing about "the kingdom of the world" becoming "the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ." Also, only Moses and Elijah were present with Jesus, but they are never mentioned as having an especially prominent position when Jesus was to return in his kingdom, so we must wonder why the vision includes only them. What is the transfiguration all about? Why are just Moses and Elijah present? To answer these questions, it is necessary to begin at Mount Sinai:

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die." (Exod. 20:18-19)

From that day, God spoke to the Israelites through Moses, and the people said, "we will listen." However, Moses would not live forever and was not even allowed to enter the promised land. Before his life was over, he warned the Israelites about the danger of taking up the ways of the heathen nations they would encounter (Deut. 18:9-14) and then specified how he would be replaced:

The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him. (v. 15)

After Moses died, this prediction met an immediate fulfillment in Joshua:

Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites listened to him and did what the LORD had commanded Moses. (Deut. 34:9)

Moses and the Prophets spoke for God under the Old Covenant. It's difficult to imagine a more prestigious calling. Israel was to "listen" to them. The Law came through Moses, and for hundreds of years God spoke to his people through prophets. The high regard for "Moses and the Prophets" as the two great authorities in the history of Israel continued right down to the time of Jesus. The New Testament contains numerous references to "Moses and the Prophets" or "the Law and the Prophets." Moses and the Law were synonymous.
Elijah was arguably Israel's greatest prophet after Moses (Deut. 34:10-11), having raised the dead (I Kgs. 17:17-24), and his name was associated with the arrival of the Messiah (Mal. 4:5-6). At the transfiguration, we see Jesus standing with Moses, who is representing the Law, and with Elijah, who is representing the Prophets. The voice from the cloud says "Listen to him!" (Matt. 17:5b). Then, Moses and Elijah disappear leaving only Jesus. The transfiguration appears to have been a demonstration showing that Jesus was the successor to Moses and the Prophets. This is how the author of Hebrews understood Christ's role:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. (Heb. 1:1-2)

The command "Listen to him!" clearly links Christ to Israel's prophets and the original prediction made by Moses.
Conclusion: The transfiguration appears to be quite unrelated to Christ's prediction in Matt. 16:28 since there is very little evidence to support interpreting the event as a preview of Christ's coming in judgment at the end of the age. The two events have practically nothing in common. The "coming" in verse 28 is inextricably linked to verse 27. It cannot be separated from the image of thousands of angels being present at the resurrection and judgment. The details of the transfiguration stand out as remarkably unlike descriptions of "the Son of Man coming in his kingdom" found in Matt. 16:27 and elsewhere in the New Testament. However, the transfiguration option appears to be the only choice for those who are looking for a future return of Christ.

Objection: You have stated that Joshua fulfilled Moses' prediction in Deut. 18:15, but in Acts 3:22-24, Peter says that's a prophecy about Jesus:

For Moses said, 'The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you must listen to everything he tells you. Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from among his people.' "Indeed, all the prophets from Samuel on, as many as have spoken, have foretold these days." (Acts 3:22-24)

When Moses said, "God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers," it's doubtful he was thinking about Jesus. If Moses was thinking ahead to Christ, it would have gone right over the people's heads. For Moses, the issue was providing a successor after his 40 years of leadership and the people would have understood it that way. Moses said, "You must listen to him." This was clearly fulfilled by Joshua: "So the Israelites listened to him." Of course, God could have inspired Moses to speak words that would later be reinterpreted by Peter. In Acts 3, Peter connects Jesus to Moses' prediction and the prophets that followed. In effect, every prophet would be another fulfillment with Christ being the last and greatest prophet. It's interesting to note that Peter said only "the prophets from Samuel on…foretold these days." That would mean Moses didn't foretell them and was not referring to Christ specifically.

Objection: In 2 Pet. 1:16-18, Peter refers to the transfiguration as the "coming of our Lord." The word "coming" in the Greek is Parousia. Isn't that referring to the second coming?

We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

The "coming of our Lord" in this passage is carelessly assumed to be referring to the second coming as experienced through the transfiguration. If that's what Peter intended, it is by no means clear. It should be remembered that the word Parousia does not refer to the second coming exclusively in the New Testament. For instance, "the coming of the lawless one" in 2 Thess. 2:9 is also a Parousia. In other places, Parousia is translated "presence" or "arrived" and does not refer to Jesus at all. So Peter's use of Parousia here does not necessarily relate to the second coming, nor does it even necessarily refer to the transfiguration considering his wording. His reference to Christ's "coming" here is somewhat ambiguous. It's possible that he is actually referring to Christ's first coming and then using the transfiguration miracle to buttress his testimony regarding Christ's divinity. After his salutation in verses 1-2, Peter begins his message:

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Pet. 1:3-4)

Peter reminds his audience that Christ's "divine power" is available to help them deal with "the corruption in the world caused by evil desires." Next, he encourages them to keep the faith and reminds them of their eternal reward (v. 10-11). Then, in verses 16-18, he endeavors to further establish Christ's credibility by recalling the miraculous transfiguration event. The subject is not the second coming. The first two chapters of 2 Peter are about avoiding sin and replacing it with "wholesome thinking" (3:1). In all of this, Peter never states or implies in the least that the transfiguration was intended to be a preview of the second coming. The problem is that people see the word "coming" in verse 16 and assume it must be referring to the second coming. Then they carelessly apply that interpretation to the transfiguration reference in verses 17 and 18. But even if the word "coming" does refer to the transfiguration, that event was still only a coming (a presence), not necessarily a preview of the coming, i.e. the second coming.

The issue boils down to this: When Jesus predicted that some would still be alive to witness "the Son of Man coming in his kingdom," was he referring to the transfiguration? There is nothing in 2 Pet. 1:16-18 to support that interpretation. Peter offers no hint whatsoever to indicate the transfiguration was intended to be a vision of "the Son of Man coming in his kingdom" as specified in Matt. 16:27-28. Evidence throughout the New Testament exposes that interpretation as being suspect to the point of being unbelievable since most of the key features are completely absent. Ultimately, those who prefer the fulfilled view of Bible prophecy can believe whatever they want to on this. The outcome of their eschatological system is not affected. It's only those still waiting for the second coming of Christ who have no alternative but to adopt this highly questionable interpretation for lack of anything more substantial.

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademarks Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

Preterism-Eschatology---What are your thoughts on the matter?

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Once Again, Please read the WHOLE Bible please!!!

2008-07-16T13:19:00.000-07:00

By Tim King

_________________________________________________________

It's not just Larry it's for all the people who contiued to "try" to use this out of context. Maybe this will help after mine beneath it. But only if you choose to escape the traditions that you have been taught about this verse. For love of God try to escape the traditions of "MEN" A belief system has to be backed by spiritual truth and the Bible, not what you want it to say!

To: Larry Hall, Sword of the Spirit Apologetics

Re: Does Acts 1:11 Affirm a Bodily Coming?

Dear Larry:
I think dealing with Acts 1:11 is needful at this time. You cite this verse in support of your comment: “Orthodoxy teaches that, with certainty, the Second Advent will be future, literal, and personal. Christ will appear in the same physical, bodily way that He departed from the mount called Olivet!” (Emphasis yours).

Actually, a host of futurists quote this verse to support their contention that Christ’s coming will be visible and bodily. I will not dispute that this passage teaches a future coming of Christ; but, then, I see this as happening from the standpoint of the apostles forty days after Christ’s resurrection. The destruction of the temple in A.D. 70 was still in their future.
Let me also say that Preterists will not argue that the coming of Christ was literal. In every episode in the Old Testament where God “came” in judgment, it was a literal appearing to pour out His wrath. When God came upon Jerusalem in 586 B.C., it was a literal destruction of that city. So we believe about Christ’s coming in judgment upon Jerusalem in A.D. 70 – it was a literal coming literally destroying the literal temple and the literal city.

Here is the passage in its context:
“And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. They also said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.’”

I would like to offer a some commentary on this passage in order to assert that this verse cannot be used to verify a bodily, visible coming of Christ.
First, I would like to look at the passage in its context. Note that there is not one word in this passage describing the body of Christ, physical or otherwise. That this passage teaches Christ’s second coming as “bodily” is drawn only from inference and reading into the text.

However, if we wish to find a clue as to what the men in white meant by “in just the same way,” shouldn’t we look at the context of the passage? After all, isn’t it just good hermeneutics to gain your interpretation of a passage by looking at the context?
This passage plainly tells us — without having to read anything into the text — two specific things about Jesus’ ascension. The first is that “a cloud received Him” and the second is that it was “out of their sight.”

Let’s deal with the first – that a cloud received Him and that He was to return in the same way. It is clear that the New Testament teaches that Jesus’ coming was to involve clouds (Matthew 24:30; 26:64; Mark 13:26; 14:62; Luke 21:27). Wanting to interpret Scriptures by the Scriptures (as you rightly insist “that Scripture MUST interpret Scripture”), let us look at some Old Testament passages that would help us to understand the New.

Exodus 16:10 – It came about as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the sons of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud.
Exodus 19:9 – The LORD said to Moses, "Behold, I will come to you in a thick cloud, so that the people may hear when I speak with you and may also believe in you forever." Then Moses told the words of the people to the LORD.
Exodus 34:5 – The LORD descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the LORD.
Leviticus 16:2 – The LORD said to Moses: "Tell your brother Aaron that he shall not enter at any time into the holy place inside the veil, before the mercy seat which is on the ark, or he will die; for I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat.”
Numbers 11:25 – Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him....

Note that in several of these passages, Yahweh is said to have “come,” He “descended,” “came down,” and “appeared.” This is language similar to that which Jesus used in reference to His own second coming. Question: was the “body” of Yahweh seen at these times or was it just that the cloud signified the presence of Yahweh? Were these manifestations of Yahweh “bodily and physical?” The answer is obvious.

Psalm 18:912 – He bowed the heavens also, and came down with thick darkness under His feet. He rode upon a cherub and flew; and He sped upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness His hiding place, His canopy around Him, darkness of waters, and thick clouds of the skies. From the brightness before Him passed His thick clouds, hailstones and coals of fire.
Psalm 97:23 – Clouds and thick darkness surround Him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne. Fire goes before Him and burns up His adversaries round about.
Psalm 104:3 – He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters; He makes the clouds His chariot; He walks upon the wings of the wind...
Isaiah 19:1 – The oracle concerning Egypt. Behold, the LORD is riding on a swift cloud and is about to come to Egypt; the idols of Egypt will tremble at His presence, and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them.
Daniel 7:13 – I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him.

Note that in the New Testament references to Jesus’ coming with clouds, the majority of scholars agree that Jesus is pointing back to this passage, referring to Himself as the “Son of Man” in Daniel. Was the main point of Jesus in doing so to assert a “physical, bodily” coming, or was it more to identify Himself with that Son of Man who was to receive glory and a kingdom that would not end or pass away (see Daniel 7:14). Preterist believe the latter.

Joel 2:12 – Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming; surely it is near, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. As the dawn is spread over the mountains, so there is a great and mighty people; there has never been anything like it, nor will there be again after it to the years of many generations.

Nahum 1:3 – The LORD is slow to anger and great in power and the LORD will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. In whirlwind and storm is His way, and clouds are the dust beneath His feet.

Zephaniah 1:1415 – Near is the great day of the LORD, near and coming very quickly; listen, the day of the LORD! In it the warrior cries out bitterly. A day of wrath is that day, a day of trouble and distress, a day of destruction and desolation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness...

Note also that many of the references to Yahweh coming in or with the clouds have to do with His bringing judgment upon His enemies and those who rebelled against His covenant. Again, there was no physical, bodily coming of Yahweh at these times.
The contention of the Preterist is that Jesus taught that He was going to come “in the glory of His Father” (Matthew 16:27), meaning that His coming was to be in the exact same manner as His Father's was in the Old Testament. This is language that the people of His generation would understand. It is the language that the high priest understood when he charged Jesus with blasphemy (Matthew 26:64-65). They understood that Jesus was identifying Himself with Yahweh Himself and claiming all the glory of deity!

Larry, the contention of the Preterist is that Christ’s coming with or on the clouds was not to be seen as “bodily and physical,” but as Jesus’ claims identifying Himself with Yahweh of the Old Testament. It confirmed His claims to being the divine Messiah. In my opinion, this is actually the capstone of the Preterist view, that the language of Jesus in describing His second coming was a bold, undeniable claim to deity. Does this put us outside of orthodoxy?

Second, let me just briefly note that the context of Acts 1:9-11 has Jesus being taken up “out of their sight” (literally in the Greek, “away from their eyes”). What more can I say on this? If you apply a literal interpretation of the Scriptures (which you insist upon), then it means, according to the men in white, that Jesus will return invisibly “out of their sight.”

Perhaps you could explain why these two plainly and contextually stated things — “a cloud received Him” and “out of their sight” — could not be the grammatical antecedents explaining the phrase “in just the same ways as you have watched Him go into heaven.”

Now I would like to make some broader observations about this text and compare it to other passages on the coming of Christ, especially those that futurists use for Christ’s future coming. We must note the history of the event as described in Acts 1:9-11.

Notice the witnesses to Christ’s ascension from the Mount of Olives — it was the apostles. You futurists insist that the coming of Christ must be “in just the same way” as the apostles witnessed Him leaves in this passage. You press so hard on the bodily/physical aspects (which aren’t there), that you leave open a whole truckload of questions.

For instance, you insist that at His second coming “every eye shall see Him.” But in Acts 1:9-11, every eye did not see Him, only the eyes of the apostles did! How then can you say that the second coming of Christ must be “in just the same way” as His ascension from the Mount of Olives?
Further, most futurists believe that the second coming of Christ is described in Revelation 19:11-16. With that in mind, here are a few other questions:
Jesus did not ascend on a white horse from the Mount of Olives in Acts 1:9-11. How can His second coming be on a white horse if it is supposed to be “in just the same way”?
Did Jesus ascend with “His eyes a flame of fire, and on His head many diadems?” If not, how can you say He will return “in just the same way”?
Jesus did not ascend with the armies of heaven following Him on white horses. How can you say that His second coming will be “in just the same way”?
Did Jesus ascend with a sharp sword in His mouth and the name “King of kings and Lord of lords” written on His robe? If not, how can you say He will return “in just the same way”?
In conclusion, Acts 1:11 cannot be used to dogmatically justify the belief that Jesus’ return will be “bodily and physical.” In fact, it is better used to build the case that His coming will be “in the clouds” (in association with the “Son of Man” in Daniel 7:13) and “out of sight” (invisible) which the Preterists believe.

In all, Larry, I am insisting that you cannot use this passage as the whip to drive the Preterists into the desert of apostasy. You come across as one more interested in assaulting honest seekers of God’s word with traditional doctrines than in bringing light to legitimate discussion.

More later.

Futurists Playbook

2008-07-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

By DTG aka love me or hate me
It's always the same with Futurist it's about us today; Acts 1:11 a
popular verse used by ultra literalist attempting to refute Covenant
Eschatology's claim that scripture proves Christ came back in AD 70,

1. The problem with getting Ultra-Literal.

Let's begin with, who were the angels speaking to in Acts 1:11 when they
said "Ye men of Galilee" Question: If the angels were speaking to the
men of Galilee. Ultra-literalist accuses Covenant Eschatologist of using
bad exegesis? Covenant Eschatology believes the angels were speaking to
the men standing before them telling them (the men before them) that He
Christ will return in the clouds in a like manner, to them. The angel is
not talking to you men of the Bronx or you men of Ohio or you men of the
first Church of the risen Lord. I pled with the Ultra-literalist to
explain how 2000 years and counting will the "Men of Galilee" that saw
Christ taken up into a cloud, see Christ coming in like manner?

2. The Coming in the Clouds.

Again the pled to the ultra literalist is this, can you please find
anywhere in the Old Testament where God showed "Himself "literally and
not veiled in the clouds?

3. Next up is Revelation 1:7.

But before I get into Vs. 1:7 we need to read Revelation 1:1, The
Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his
servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and
signified [it] by his angel unto his servant John: taken literally,
"must shortly come to pass" does not mean 2000 years later people. Verse
1:8 turns right around and says "which is which was and which is "to
come" again there is no 2000 year delay sorry! Oh" let me not forget
verse 1:3 for the times are at hand, I can't find an explanation in the
futurist play book for these verses. Back to Revelation 1:7 A typical
Futurist play book tactic is to isolate verse 7 from the others. The
uninspired Futurist say, Will Jesus (God) really didn't mean what He
said in those other verses, Let's look at Rev 1:7 Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they [also] which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail
because of him. Even so, Amen.

Acts 1:9 and when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was
taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. Christ is
received up in a cloud, as the Clouds covered YAWH in the Old testament
the clouds cover the now glorified Christ, In Mark 8:38 Christ says
Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this
adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be
ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

How did Christ's father come in the Old Testament?

Just as YAWH came to Israel so would Christ come "in like manner" in the
Glory of his father, this parallels the Old Testament visitation of YAWH
to Israel, veiled in a cloud.

They" also which "pierced him lines up with Matthew 25:63,64,
Question, who pierced Christ?
How can they that pierced Christ 2000 years ago see Christ coming today
in the clouds?

The generation that Christ was speaking to did see Him come in AD70 on
the clouds in the glory of his father. The bible teaches Christ must
have come if he is the Christ. Futurist must prove he didn't and that
Jesus is the Christ and not just say it didn't happen because "I" didn't
see it.

If you start out wrong you end up wrong!!!!!

2008-07-04T09:36:00.000-07:00

This is for all the confused people please take note by DTG
How Heaven and Earth Passed Away! By Don K. Preston
Question: Has heaven and earth passed away? Ridiculous you say? Let us ask another question: Do you believe the Old Covenant has been done away? I dare say you will say it has. Few believers in Jesus would deny he has established his New Covenant. IF YOU BELIEVE THE OLD COVENANT HAS PASSED AWAY THEN YOU MUST BELIEVE "HEAVEN AND EARTH" HAVE PASSED AWAY! Please read the words of Jesus: "Think not that I am come to destroy the Law and the Prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. Verily I say unto you, until heaven and earth pass, not one jot or one tittle shall pass from the law until all be fulfilled". [Matthew 5:17-18] This little tract will attempt to answer a few questions about these verses. First, what did Jesus say had to happen before the law could pass away? Second, does the Bible tell us when these requirements would be met? Let us answer the first question. Until Heaven and Earth Pass Did you notice that Jesus said heaven and earth had to pass away before the law could pass?!? Yes, he really did say it; please, get your Bible right now and read it for yourself! It has been my experience that a LOT OF PEOPLE have never seen those words before! A relative of mine read the verse five times before admitting it actually says this! Has the heaven and earth passed away? Well, obviously, physical heaven and earth haven't been destroyed. But read the text again will you? Jesus DID say until heaven and earth pass away the Old Law could not pass. Our choices here are limited. If we understand the "heaven and earth" as literal, physical heaven and earth then this means the Old Law is still in effect. Simply put the argument would go like this: If heaven and earth had to pass before the Old Law could pass; and if heaven and earth refers to literal, physical heaven and earth, then, since literal, physical heaven and earth still exist, [have not passed], it must be true that the Old Law has not passed. A person could say the Law here is the Law of Jesus; but this will not work because Jesus had not yet died to confirm his New Covenant. He was living under the Old Law at the time also. The Jews standing there were not concerned with the passing of Jesus' law. They did not believe he even had one! They were concerned with the Old Law! Finally, if this is speaking about the passing of Christ's law it contradicts the verses in the New Testament that teach Jesus' word will never pass away, Matthew 24:35. On the other hand, if we understand the "heaven and earth" as figurative language referring not to physical creation, but to something else, it is possible that this "heaven and earth" could pass away, allowing for the passing of the Law. Let us explore the definition of the heaven and earth momentarily. Defining Heaven and Earth Sadly many Bible students are unfamiliar with the apocalyptic, and figurative language of the Bible. So many people like to say "The Bible says what it means and means what it says". They seem to be saying there is no such thing as figurative or spiritual language. This is sad because a LOT of the Bible is symbolic language. The term heaven and earth is a good example. [We are not saying the term heaven and earth never refers to material creation; we ARE saying this term is very often used figuratively]. Remember, Jesus was a Jew. As such he was raised hearing the Old Testament prophets taught in the synagogues. These prophets utilized spiritual language. As the prophet of and to Israel, Matthew 15, Jesus was not only familiar with the language of the prophets, he used the same language. How did the prophets use the term heaven and earth? The prophet Isaiah predicted the passing of heaven and earth in chapter 24. He said the earth would be utterly broken down, clean dissolved, and completely removed, vs. 19. Now this sounds like the destruction of material creation but closer examination reveals it to be speaking of the destruction of Israel's Covenant World under the imagery of "heaven and earth". Note verse 5 gives the reason for the destruction--"they have broken the everlasting covenant". What covenant was that? It was the Mosaic Covenant! God was going to destroy "heaven and earth" because Israel had broken her covenant with Jehovah! Are we to believe that one day the universe will be destroyed because Israel broke her covenant? A dilemma is created for the literal interpretation of the text when we come to verse 22. In these verses God is depicted as dwelling gloriously in Mount Zion, that is, in Jerusalem, after the destruction of heaven and earth. Reader, if the earth has been destroyed how could literal Mount Zion still exist? We believe the best explanation is to see Isaiah predicting the destruction of Israel's COVENANT heaven and earth because she had violated the Mosaic Covenant with Jehovah. As a result God's righteousness would remain in a New Zion--in a new COVENANT heaven and earth. Another example of "heaven and earth" being referent to the Covenant World of Israel and not literal creation is Isaiah 51:16."I have put my word in your mouth and have covered you with the shadow of my hand, to establish the heavens, to found the earth, and to say to Zion, 'You are my people'". [NASV] [Unfortunately, the New International Version incorrectly translates this verse. Check several translations.] What is the point? Notice that God is speaking to Israel. He says he gave them his law, the Mosaic Covenant, the same law Jesus is speaking about in Matthew 5:17-18, to establish heaven and lay the foundation of the earth! Clearly Jehovah is not saying he gave the Mosaic Covenant to Israel to create literal heaven and earth! Material creation existed long before Israel was ever given the Mosaic Covenant. The meaning of the verse is that Jehovah gave his covenant with Israel to CREATE THEIR WORLD--A COVENANT WORLD WITH JEHOVAH God created Israel's "heaven and earth" by giving them his Covenant. Now if he destroyed THAT Old Covenant heaven and earth and gave a NEW COVENANT, would he not thereby be creating a NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH? This is precisely the thought in the NEW COVENANT SCRIPTURES! Old Israel's covenant was about to pass away, II Corinthians 3:10ff; Hebrews 8:13; 12:25ff. The New Covenant of Christ was being given, Ephesians 3:3ff; Hebrews 2:1ff. Since the giving of Covenant created "heaven and earth" the New Heaven and Earth of Christ would not be completed until the New Covenant was completely revealed. It therefore follows that if the New Heavens and Earth of Christ has not arrived then CHRIST'S NEW COVENANT HAS NOT YET BEEN FULLY REVEALED! If Christ's New Covenant has been fully revealed then the NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH HAS FULLY COME! Consider this carefully in light of II Peter 3 and Revelation 21-22, passages written as the process of revealing the NEW COVENANT was yet incomplete. In Isaiah 51:5-6 God predicted the "heaven and earth" would vanish. This is the same "heaven and earth" he had established at Sinai. This is not a prediction of the passing of literal heaven and earth--it is a prediction of the passing of the Old World of Israel so that the New Covenant World of Messiah would be established. We believe this heaven and earth that Isaiah said would perish is the same heaven and earth Jesus said must pass before the Old Law would pass. Isaiah 65-66 also predicted the passing of "heaven and earth" but as with the other prophecies noted above it does not refer to the passing of physical creation. In chapter 65 God predicted that Israel would fill the measure of her sin, vs. 7; he would destroy them, vs. 8-15; create a new people with a new name, vs. 15-16; create a new heaven and earth with a new Jerusalem, vs. 17-19. The creation of the new heavens and earth would follow the destruction of the Jews after they had filled the measure of their sins and been destroyed at the coming of the Lord in fire with his angels, Isaiah 66:15ff. The new creation of Isaiah 66 is depicted as a time of evangelism and Jew and Gentile being brought together under the banner of God, vss 19ff. Now Isaiah 65 said the new creation would come when Israel had filled the measure of her sin and was destroyed. Do we have any clue as to when this was to happen? In Matthew 23:31-39 Jesus said Israel would fill up the measure of her sins IN HIS GENERATION! In chapter 24 he predicted the passing of Israel's heaven and earth at his coming, vs. 29-36. Now notice: 1.] Isaiah said Israel's old heaven and earth would not be destroyed until Israel had filled her sin 2.] The new heaven and earth would not come until Israel's old heaven and earth was destroyed; 3.] Jesus said Israel would fill up the measure of her sin and be destroyed at his coming in his generation; 4.] Therefore Israel's "heaven and earth" was destroyed at Jesus' coming against Israel, when the measure of her sin was full, in that generation. In Matthew 24 Jesus predicted the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. This Temple was the very center of the Jewish world. This is where the sacrifices for sin were offered by the genealogically confirmed Levitical priests. For Jesus to predict the utter desolation of this temple was the same as saying their world was about to come crashing down around their ears! In graphic detail Jesus chronicled the events to occur before that disaster and the signs indicating its imminence, vss. 14-15. In highly apocalyptic, [symbolic] language he described the fall itself: "The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heaven shall be shaken, and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of the sky with power and great glory". In verses 32-33 Jesus said that by heeding the signs they could know his coming was at hand. In verse 34 he assured them that generation would not pass away before all those things happened. In verse 35 Jesus reassured them that what he had said was true. He said "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall never pass away". This verse is Jesus' way of contrasting the Old World of Israel that was to perish, and his New World that would remain. That Old World would surely perish as he had just said--but his World will never pass! In verse 36 Jesus gave a final warning about knowing the time of those events. Although he informed them how to know when the event was imminent and reassured them that it would definitely happen in that generation, he tells them they cannot know the precise day and hour. They must therefore be watchful, verse 42ff. Can you see the relationship of Jesus' prediction of the passing of the "heaven and earth" in Matthew 24 with his statement in chapter 5:17-18? In chapter 24 he said their world, symbolized by the temple and city, was to pass away; and he expressed it in the imagery of the passing of heaven and earth. In chapter 5 he had already said the "heaven and earth" had to pass before the Law could pass. We shall see below the perfect correspondence with this idea and Jesus' statement that all of the Old Covenant had to be fulfilled for the Law to pass.
Hebrews 12:25-28 is another text that speaks of the passing of the Old Covenant World under the imagery of the passing of heaven and earth. The writer alludes to the giving of the Law at Sinai, [remember Isaiah 51], as the shaking of earth. He says God promised to shake not only earth, but heaven also. This shaking signified removing them; therefore God was promising to remove heaven and earth. Why? So that something that could not be removed would remain. Now notice: in verse 28 he says they were at that time receiving, [they had not already completely received it], a kingdom "that cannot be shaken". Reader, if they were receiving an unshakable kingdom this of necessity means the "heaven and earth" was being removed! [Remember Jesus' words in Matthew 24:35 about the "heaven and earth" passing but his word not passing? Jesus' world then is unshakable. Hebrews is discussing the shaking of one world and receiving of another unshakable kingdom. See the comparison?] Patently, physical heaven and earth was not being removed; but Hebrews was written just a few years before the fall of Jerusalem and the Temple. Further, the Gospel had been preached for some time declaring the superiority of Christ and the imminent demise of the Old World. The Old World of Israel was on the verge of destruction; the New World was being delivered. Thus, we have another example of the Bible speaking of the passing of heaven and earth when it means the passing of the Old World of Israel. Space forbids full discussion of II Peter 3 and Revelation as further examples of scriptures speaking of the passing of heaven and earth when the meaning was the passing of the Old World of Israel. Suffice it to say both Peter and John say the heaven and earth that was to perish was the same heaven and earth the Old Covenant had predicted to perish. See II Peter 3:1-2 and Revelation 22:6. The significance of this fact will become apparent below. What have we seen then? We have seen that both the Old and New Covenant predicted the passing of "heaven and earth" when physical heaven and earth was not the subject. The World of Israel was the subject. We believe this is precisely what Jesus had in mind in Matthew 5:17-18 when he said "until heaven and earth pass, not one jot or one tittle shall pass from the law". He was saying that until Israel's "WORLD," symbolized by the city and temple, was destroyed, the law would not pass away. Until All Is Fulfilled Not only did Jesus say the Law would not pass until heaven and earth passed, he said the Law could not pass until it was all fulfilled. It has been the unfortunate practice of many to essentially ignore the first "until" in Matthew 5:17-18. The Sabbatarians are most observant of the first one, insisting that since [physical] heaven and earth still stand the Law still stands. This would be fine except there are two "untils" in these verses and they are of equal force. Jesus said when all the Law was fulfilled the Law would pass--and the Bible is very emphatic in telling us when all the Law would be fulfilled. In Daniel 9:24-27 Daniel was told that 70 weeks had been determined on his people and city, i.e. Jerusalem. By the end of this prophetic time period God promised that six things would be accomplished. Daniel was told that by the end of that period God would "seal up vision and prophecy". In my book "Seal Up Vision and Prophecy" I demonstrate the wide agreement among Hebrew scholars that "seal up vision and prophecy" means the complete fulfillment of all prophecy. Daniel's prophecy then tells of the time when all prophecy would be fulfilled. When would this be? The end of Daniel's vision was the destruction of Jerusalem that occurred in 70 AD. See verse 27 and compare it with Matthew 24:15ff where Jesus said the Abomination of Desolation and his coming would occur in his generation. The last book in the Bible confirms that all prophecy was to be fulfilled at the fall of Jerusalem. This book is the story of the fall of the great city, Babylon. Many differing interpretations have been offered to identify this city and yet the most obvious interpretation of all has been ignored. Revelation specifically identifies Babylon--it is the great city "where our Lord was crucified", 11:8. Reader, Jesus was not crucified in Rome; he was not crucified "in" the Roman Catholic church, he was not crucified "in" apostate Christianity. Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem! Our point is this, John predicted the fall of Babylon, the city where our Lord was crucified. He expressed this under the imagery of the passing of heaven and earth. He said all this was to "shortly take place". See the correlation with Daniel 9, Matthew 5 and Matthew 24? Such beautiful harmony is no accident! Finally, we have Jesus' own words as to when all prophecy was to be fulfilled. In Luke 21:22 our Lord spoke of the destruction of Jerusalem and said "These be the days of vengeance in which all things that are written must be fulfilled". In verse 32 he emphatically said "this generation will not pass away until all things take place". Verse 33 contains Jesus' statement that "heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words will by no means pass away". Luke 21 thus contains the identical elements of Matthew 5:17-18; the passing of heaven and earth, and the fulfillment of all prophecy emphatically placed within the context of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD! Are you willing to accept Christ's inspired word? Note the perfect correlation of Daniel 9, Matthew 24, Revelation and Luke 21. They all tell of the time when all prophecy would be fulfilled; they all identify that time as the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD! In Matthew 5:17-18 Jesus said the Old Law would not pass away until all of it was fulfilled; Jesus said all that was written would be fulfilled when Jerusalem fell in his generation; therefore the Law did not pass until Jerusalem fell in Jesus' generation!
Now, Jesus said "until heaven and earth pass" the law would not pass. He also said "until all be fulfilled" the law would not pass. We have seen that the passing of the Old World of Israel in the destruction of her city and temple in 70 AD is spoken of as the passing of heaven and earth. We have also seen that Jesus said that was when all things that were written would be fulfilled. Since Israel's heaven and earth would pass when Jerusalem and the temple was destroyed, and since all things would be fulfilled when Jerusalem and the temple was destroyed, we conclude that is the time when the Old Law would completely pass. Yes, But...Objections Considered
There are basically four objections to what we have just studied. First, it is objected that the end of the world did not happen and Jesus did not come in the fall of Jerusalem. Second, it is said that the Law could not pass at the destruction of Jerusalem because the Bible says it was nailed to the Cross of Jesus at his death. Third, and a corollary to number two, it is insisted the Bible teaches that all the Old Law was fulfilled at the Cross. Finally, many insist there is a difference between the "Law" that had to be fulfilled and the Prophets. Let us begin with the first objection.
Did Christ Come In 70 AD? To some this may seem a ridiculous question--to serious Bible students this is not a debatable point. The Bible is quite emphatic that Jesus was to return in that first century generation before all of his disciples died. Jesus so stated in Matthew 16:27-28. In chapter 24:29-34 it speaks of him coming in power, with angels and great glory to gather the saints. In verse 34 he said "Verily I say to you, this generation will not pass, until all these things be fulfilled". Please note Jesus said "Verily I say to you", Matthew 16:28; 24:34. This word "verily" means "Truly" and is the strongest assertion of the validity and solemnity of what is said. James said "The coming of the Lord is at hand" and "the judge stands right at the door," James 5:7-9. He told his readers to be patient "until the coming of the Lord". Peter said "the end of all things is at hand," and asserted Christ was "ready to judge the living and the dead," when he wrote, I Peter 4:5,7. The Hebrew writer said "In a very little while, he that will come will come and will not tarry," 10:37. In Revelation God's Son said "Behold, I come quickly" several times, see chapter 22. Some one will object that Jesus did not come back because time continues. This objection overlooks the very thing we have sought to establish earlier--the prophets did not predict the end of time, they predicted the passing of the "heaven and earth" of Old Testament Israel! The end of time is not a Biblical subject! Reader, Jesus said he was coming back in the generation that was living when he spoke. Are you willing to accept the word of the Lord of heaven or your own preconceived ideas about the end of the world? Just what does the authority of the Scriptures mean to you? What does INSPIRATION mean? The "Already-But Not Yet" of the Passing of the Law The second objection cited above says the Law could not have passed at the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD because Paul says the Law was nailed to the cross of Jesus when he was crucified, Colossians 2:14f. Please read that text; sounds impressive does it not? But there is more to the picture than most want to admit! There is in scripture something the scholars call the "already but not yet". Simply put, the writers of the Bible often spoke of certain things as PRESENT REALITIES in certain texts while in other passages they spoke of the same things as COMING IN THE NEAR FUTURE! In other words, they said they had them [the blessings], but they did NOT [fully] have them yet! This is true of the passing of the Old Law! In Ephesians 2 Paul taught about the passing of the Law and that the cross was the power of that passing. It is equally clear from Paul's other writings that he believed the full passing of the Law was future to him! In II Corinthians 3 the apostle discusses the passing of the Law written and engraven in stones, the Old Covenant. In verse 11 he says "If what is passing away [that is the Old Law, DKP] was glorious, what remains is much more glorious". [NKJV] The reader will please notice the PRESENT TENSE of the verse! Reader, this passage was written over 20 years after the Cross, yet Paul said the Old Law was passing, not had passed, away! To drive this home even more see the next verse--but before that see Romans 8:24-"hope that is seen is no hope". Something realized is no longer anticipated-no longer the object of hope! Remember this as we go back to II Corinthians 3. In verse 12 Paul says "Seeing then that we have such hope". What hope was that? Please go there right now and see for yourself that it was the passing away of the Old Law! Paul, TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE DEATH OF JESUS ON THE CROSS, called the passing of the Old Law a HOPE! The passing of the Law was for Paul "already but not yet"! Without controversy the Cross was the power of the passing. Some have called it the beginning of the end. But as we have seen, ALL the Law had to be fulfilled before the Law could pass, and ALL of the Old Law was not fulfilled at the Cross. All Fulfilled At the Cross?
The third objection says in effect that on the Cross Jesus fulfilled ALL THAT WAS NECESSARY FOR THE PASSING OF THE OLD LAW, i. e. his sacrifice, and therefore the Law could pass when his passion was completed. The verse offered as proof for this position is Luke 24:44- "These are the words I spoke to you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning me". These words are construed by those who insist the Law fully passed at the Cross to mean that Jesus was saying his death was the fulfillment of all things necessary for the passing of the Law!
One thing that should immediately strike the reader is the fact that Jesus is not even speaking of the passing of the law and the prerequisites for that. He IS speaking of the necessity of the fulfillment of the law to be sure--but in contrast to those who appeal to this text he is not saying "now here is all that is necessary for the Old Covenant to pass away; I must suffer". In Matthew 5 Jesus IS speaking of the prerequisites for the passing of the Law, and he says it must ALL be fulfilled. In Luke 24 Jesus was saying that his passion was one of the constituent elements of the Law that had to be fulfilled NOT THE ONLY THING IN THE LAW THAT HAD TO BE FULFILLED! Does Jesus limit "the fulfillment of all things" in Luke to his passion? Hardly! Go back to verse 27. Jesus taught his disciples: "And beginning at Moses and the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself". Notice the reference to all the scriptures. Now read verse 26- "Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things AND TO ENTER HIS GLORY?" [emphasis mine] Reader, in expounding the scriptures and the need for him to fulfill all things JESUS DID NOT STOP AT THE CROSS, HE SPOKE OF THE GLORY TO FOLLOW THE CROSS! Even those who believe the Law ended at Calvary do not believe Jesus entered his glory at the Cross; they place that at Pentecost. Now since Jesus was expounding on the need to fulfill all things written in the Law and Prophets, and since he did not stop at the Cross but spoke of the glory to follow, it must be true that the fulfillment of all things written in the Law and Prophets had to include Christ's entrance into the "glorious things" and this was sometime after the Cross! These thoughts are corroborated in Acts 3:18ff. In verse 18 Peter says Jesus fulfilled all things written concerning his suffering. But notice verses 21 and following. Peter tells them Christ would remain in heaven until all things foretold by the prophets i.e. the restoration of all things, were fulfilled. Reader, the restoration of all things is equivalent to the consummation of the glory of the Messiah. It means the Messiah is fully established in his kingdom! Thus, Peter, in speaking of the restoration of all things was speaking of the fulfillment of the rest of the Old Covenant scriptures--and this fulfillment was directly related to the glory of Messiah! When we examine Luke 24 and see that Jesus said it was necessary for him to suffer and enter his glory we can see it involves more than just the cross, the ascension and Pentecost. It involves the full establishment of the Kingdom of Messiah!
In addition, in Luke 24:44-47 Jesus said that not only must he suffer and enter his glory, but that "remission and repentance of sins should be preached in all nations beginning at Jerusalem". THE FULFILLMENT OF ALL THINGS INCLUDED WORLD EVANGELISM; PATENTLY THIS DID NOT HAPPEN AT THE CROSS OR PENTECOST!
And consider: to say that all that was necessary to abrogate the Old Law was the Passion is to directly reverse Jesus' words in Matthew 5:17-18! Jesus said NONE of the law would pass until ALL WAS FULFILLED. But the view that the Law passed at the Cross makes Jesus to say ALL the Law would pass when SOME of it was fulfilled! Specifically, this objection has Jesus saying that ALL THE LAW WOULD PASS WHEN ONE PREDICTION, THAT OF HIS PASSION, WAS FULFILLED! But Jesus said all the Law and prophets had to be fulfilled; not just one specific prediction! Reader, when an interpretation completely reverses Christ's words there is
something wrong! Jesus not only said he had to suffer, he said he had to enter his glory; he said the gospel had to preached in all the world. Fulfillment of all things positively entailed more than the cross, thus the Law could not pass at the Cross since Jesus said all of it had to be fulfilled before any of it could pass. Finally, if you say the law passed at the cross then "heaven and earth" passed at the cross! Yet Hebrews 12, which positively is speaking about the passing of the Old Law under the imagery of the passing of heaven and earth, was written after the Cross and that passing was still future! Further, it does not explain how all of the law was not fulfilled at cross, in light of Luke 21:22. These are serious objections to the view that the Law fully passed at the Cross. LAW VERSUS PROPHETS? Many try to negate the force of Matthew 5:17-18 by saying what Jesus really meant was that he would fulfill all the legal and moral mandates of the Old Law and the Old Law would then pass; but he did not really mean all PROPHECIES had to be fulfilled. Thus, in this interpretation there is a distinction between the Law and the Prophets.
This interpretation flatly contradicts Luke 24:44! In that text Jesus said "all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses, and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning me". Reader, you cannot delineate between "the law" and the "prophets" in Matthew 5 and then appeal to Luke 24 to prove Jesus fulfilled just "the law" in his passion! Luke 24 speaks about the law, the prophets, and the Psalms and Jesus said all things had to be fulfilled! If Jesus was saying he had to fulfill the things written about his death, and if all he had to fulfill was "the Law" as distinct from the prophets, then patently, THE LAW OF MOSES PREDICTED THAT DEATH!Reader, the Law had a predictive element to it; it was far more than legal mandates and moral legislation. See Colossians 2:16f In that passage Paul told the Colossians not to be judged in regard to meat and drink, feast days, and Sabbaths. These were all part of the legislation of the Old Law. But notice, in verse 17 Paul says they all foreshadowed Christ--they were "shadows of things to come". [Please note those things were still viewed as coming! They had not fully arrived yet!] Jesus said "the law" was predictive in nature. In Matthew 11:13 our Lord said "For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John". Did you catch that? Jesus said the LAW and the prophets PROPHESIED! How then can one delineate between the prophets and "the law"? Simply put, he cannot Biblically do so! In addition, in Hebrews 10:1-4 the writer says the Law was a shadow of good things to come, [once again those things were viewed as not yet fully come]. Our point is that one cannot delineate between the Law and the Prophets for the Law itself was prophetic! Jesus had to fulfill all the prophetic scriptures whether couched in types, symbols, visions, or oracles. Further, THE PROPHETS ARE VERY CLEARLY CALLED "THE LAW"! In I Corinthians 14:21-22 Paul quotes from Isaiah 28 and specifically calls it "the law". A quick check of Romans 3:10ff will reveal that Paul quotes from the Psalms, Jeremiah, Proverbs and Isaiah and calls all of them "the Law", vs. 19. In addition, as noted above, THE LAW PROPHESIED, Matthew 11:13. Now since the prophets are called "the law", and since "the law" PROPHESIED one cannot delineate between the law and prophets in Matthew 5.
Our point is that the term "the Law" was the abbreviated way of referring to the entire Old Covenant. When Jesus said "one jot or one tittle will in no wise pass from the Law until all be fulfilled" he was using the form of speech prevalent in his time. He did not need to say "Law and Prophets" or "Law, Prophets and Psalms" each and every time! When Jesus said he did not "come to destroy the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill" he was saying he came to fulfill all the Law and prophets. He was using a form of ellipsis. When he said he did not come to destroy the Law and Prophets but to fulfill he did not have to say "all the Law and Prophets" again; it was understood that was what he meant. This being true it is patent that Jesus did not say JUST THE LAW, TO THE EXCLUSION OF THE PROPHETS, HAD TO BE FULFILLED BEFORE THE OLD SYSTEM COULD PASS. He in fact, did say ALL THE PROPHETS HAD TO BE FULFILLED BEFORE THE OLD LAW COULD PASS! What we see then is that when one attempts to have Jesus say all he had to do was fulfill the legal and moral mandates of the law before the Law could pass he imposes a non-scriptural distinction upon the term "the Law". Second, he ignores the elliptical language of Matthew 5:18; and ignores the fact that the Old Law itself, even the legislative edicts, were prophetic in nature. Jesus did indeed have to fulfill ALL THE LAW AND PROPHETS BEFORE THE OLD LAW COULD PASS! Fulfilling the Promises and Purpose of the Law I would like to ask you a question: If a law or covenant has been abrogated, are any of its penalties or promises applicable anymore? Yes, or No? Will you please get a pencil and circle the one you believe is correct? Now common sense says that if a law is no longer in effect then its penalties or promises are voided. Well, consider this in light of Jesus' words in Matthew 5:17-18. If the Old Covenant was abrogated at the Cross does this not mean that all Old Covenant promises and penalties were either fulfilled or abrogated at that time? If not, why not? Now lets see what this means. Paul emphatically says his eschatology is taken directly from the Old Covenant, Acts 24:14ff; Acts 26:21ff. Specifically, he tells us that the promise of the resurrection was an Old Covenant promise made by and to Moses and all the prophets. But Paul was speaking about this promise SEVERAL YEARS AFTER THE CROSS WHERE, WE ARE TOLD, THE OLD COVENANT WAS TAKEN AWAY. But if the Old Covenant was taken away at the Cross how could Paul, years afterward, still be preaching Old Covenant promises?!? You see, if the law was nullified at the Cross, THEN ALL OF IT WAS NULLIFIED! Remember, Jesus said NONE would pass until ALL was fulfilled. If ALL was not fulfilled then NONE of it passed! The Old Covenant stands or falls as a WHOLE! The Old Covenant had several constituent prophetic elements and it was essential they all be fulfilled before the Old Covenant could pass and the New Covenant World be fully established. The Old Covenant predicted the salvation of the remnant of Israel, Isaiah 2-4; the gathering of the Gentiles, Isaiah 49:6ff; the giving of a New Covenant, Jeremiah 31:29ff; the filling up of the measure of Israel's sin leading to their destruction, Isaiah 65:7ff; the coming of the Lord in judgment of the nations, Isaiah 66, Joel 3:1; Zechariah 14; the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Joel 2:28ff; the passing of the "heaven and earth" of Israel, Isaiah 24, 65, 66; and much more. IF THE OLD COVENANT WAS ABROGATED AT THE CROSS HOW COULD ANY OF THESE PROPHECIES BE VALID AFTER THE CROSS? Quite simply, they could not; yet the New Testament writers repeatedly refer to these prophecies AFTER PENTECOST and anticipate their fulfillment! THIS UNEQUIVOCALLY PROVES THE OLD COVENANT WAS NOT ABROGATED AT THE CROSS This is also demonstrated in another way. In Acts 13:40f Paul preached to the Jews at Antioch. They rejected the gospel and Paul warned them "Behold ye despisers and wonder and perish; for I work a work in your days, a work, which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto him". What is the significance of Paul's words? They are taken from Habakkuk 1:5. PAUL, IN ACTS 13, YEARS AFTER THE OLD COVENANT WAS SUPPOSEDLY TAKEN AWAY, WAS THREATENING ISRAEL WITH OLD COVENANT WRATH! National destruction for violating the Covenant was part and parcel of the Law delivered to Israel, Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28-30. BUT IF THAT COVENANT WAS ABROGATED AT THE CROSS HOW COULD PAUL STILL BE THREATENING ISRAEL WITH COVENANT WRATH? Patently, he could not!
Note our argument: Major Premise: No promise or penalty of a covenant is applicable if that covenant has been abrogated. Minor Premise: But Paul applied Old Covenant penalties to Israel, Acts 13.Conclusion: Therefore the Old Covenant penalties were still applicable. Note another argument: Major Premise: No promise or penalty of a Covenant is applicable if that Covenant has been abrogated. Minor Premise: The promises of the coming of the Lord, judgment of the nations, and the resurrection are Old Covenant promises, Isa. 66; Dan. 12; Joel 3:1f, etc.
Minor Premise: The Old Covenant was abrogated at the Cross- traditional view of the Old Covenant. Conclusion: Therefore the promises of the coming of the Lord, the judgment of the nations, and the resurrection, being Old Covenant promises, were abrogated at the Cross!
IF THERE IS A SINGLE OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECY THAT IS UNFULFILLED THEN THE OLD COVENANT STILL STANDS; IF THE OLD TESTAMENT IS TRULY ABROGATED THEN THE ESCHATOLOGICAL PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT MUST BE FULFILLED OR NULLIFIED! Reader, the view that the Old Law passed at the Cross strips the New Testament scriptures of all eschatology and demands that every promise of "last things" was fulfilled at the Cross and then God started over on Pentecost with a totally new set of "last things" promises! This is patently false; the New Testament writers constantly affirm that they are simply reiterating the Old Covenant promises, II Peter 3:1, 13; Revelation 10:6ff!
The truth is that the Old Covenant promises of the coming of the Lord, judgment and resurrection had to be fulfilled before the New Covenant World of Jesus could be perfected. Those promises of "the end" as seen above, do not deal with the end of time but with the end of the Old Covenant World of Israel and the full establishment of the New Covenant World of Christ. The Old Law could not pass until it had accomplished its purpose--this is established in Galatians 3:23-25. Paul here says those under the law were "under guard", "kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed". He says the Law was given to serve as a "tutor" [NKJV] to bring them to Christ. He then concludes by saying "after faith is come we are no longer under a tutor". It is clear that "the faith" Paul has in mind is not the subjective faith of individuals but the objective system of faith we call the Gospel System. The Law was to continue until "The Faith" came. Reader, did "The Faith" come at the cross? Patently not; although the cross is where the New Covenant of "The Faith" was confirmed by the death of Jesus the Testament maker, Galatians 3:15. The Old Covenant predicted the coming of a New Covenant, Jeremiah 31:29ff. Did the Old Covenant pass away before that predicted New Covenant was delivered? If so the Old Covenant passed away before it had fulfilled its purpose in bringing Israel to a New Covenant! In Hebrews 8:8-13 the writer recalls God's promise given in Jeremiah and then says "In that he says 'a new covenant' he has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away". The Hebrew writer was living in the days in which the New Covenant was being delivered. As he writes he recalls God's promise to give the New Covenant and says the Old was ready to vanish away! Reader, the Old had not yet been fulfilled! It had not yet fulfilled its function because the promised New Covenant was not yet fully delivered. But the writer says the Old was "ready to vanish". "Ready to vanish" does not mean it had already vanished! It is clear then that the Old Law was in a time of transition. The New Covenant had to be fully given before the full purpose of the Old was completed and Paul very clearly says the Law was to last until "The Faith" was delivered. Would anyone assert the New Covenant was fully delivered at the cross? At Pentecost? Surely not. Therefore until the Law had fulfilled its purpose in bringing the Jews to the New Covenant it did not pass away. Summary and Conclusion What have we seen in this little tract? We have seen that heaven and earth had to pass away before the Old Law could pass away! We have defined "heaven and earth" as the Old Covenant world of Old Israel. We have seen that instead of predicting the destruction of physical heaven and earth the Bible predicted the passing of Old Israel's world in order for God to create the New World of his Son-the Kingdom of God-the church of the living God. We have seen that the Bible very clearly tells when ALL prophecy was to be fulfilled--when heaven and earth would pass--in 70 AD with the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, the very heart and core of Israel's world. We have examined several objections and found them to be based upon false suppositions. We have seen that if the Old Covenant has been abrogated then ALL OF ITS PROPHECIES INCLUDING THE PREDICTIONS OF THE "END" MUST BE FULFILLED OR ABROGATED. IF THOSE PROPHECIES HAVE NOT BEEN FULFILLED THEN THE OLD COVENANT STILL STANDS! We have seen that the Old Law could not pass until it had fulfilled its purpose and that purpose included deliverance to the New Covenant--that was not fulfilled until all the New Covenant was revealed and confirmed. That simply did not happen at the Cross or Pentecost The ideas presented in this tract are representative of what is called Covenant Eschatology. This is the view that God has kept his promises in fulfilling all prophecy by the time of the passing of Old Israel in 70 AD. The fall of Jerusalem was far more than the passing of the capital of Judaism--it was a spiritually cosmic event! It was the time of the coming of Jesus, Matthew 24:29-34; the judgment, Matthew 16:27-28. It was at that time that the salvation in Christ was fully revealed, Colossians 3:1ff. It is because of what happened then, as the consummation of the work started on the Cross, Hebrews 9:26-28, that you and I can have confidence in the Word of God and the God of the Word. Christ did come in judgment of the Old World in 70 AD and fully establish the unending New Covenant Heaven and Earth. This is when all things foretold by the prophets was fulfilled and that is how heaven and earth passed away!

Preterism-Eschatology---What are your thoughts on the matter?

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How Heaven and Earth Passed Away!
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Romans 3:3,4 mightes be justified in thy sayings and mightest overcome when thou are judged!!

2008-07-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

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Quodlibet Journal: Volume 2 Number 2, Spring 2000 http://www.Quodlibet.net
Preterism and the Question of Heresy© Reverend Randall Otto, PhD
In a recent article in Quodlibet Online Journal, I concurred with R. C. Sproul's thesis that Jesus was a preterist. Sproul suggests in his book The Last Days According to Jesus (1998) that, while Jesus believed the parousia of which he spoke in the Olivet Discourse was fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in the Jewish war of 66-70 A.D., there remains another parousia yet future which is described by Paul. However, the question for partial preterists like Sproul remains: "if the eschatological scenario and parousia Jesus predicted in the Olivet discourse was fulfilled in AD 70, where did the apostles get the notion of another, yet future, coming? Are we back to the old liberal portrayal of Paul as the real founder of Christianity, and the perennial pitting of Jesus over against Paul (and the rest of the apostles)?" [1] I concluded that article by contending, "If 'the last days according to Jesus' were fulfilled in the judgment on Jerusalem in AD 70, then the Church must be reformed and always reforming according to the Word of its Lord so that its eschatology fits Jesus' teaching." [2]
Full preterism views the parousia singly spoken of in the NT as fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies in the Jewish war of 66-70 A.D. This eschatological viewpoint has been rapidly spreading throughout Reformed Christianity. A contributor to the Reformed Reconstructionist Chalcedon Report (September, 1997) said, "It is my understanding that this heresy is spreading like weeks [sic, weeds] in Reformed churches." [3] This quote not only describes the rapid spread of preterism; it also denounces preterism as heresy. The charge of heresy has become more prominent as preterism has gained adherents. At least one conservative Reformed denomination has even officially condemned preterism as heresy. On March 13, 1997, the Western Classis of the Reformed Church in the United States (RCUS) approved an "Action to Condemn Hyper-Preterism as Heresy," an overture which the Synod of the RCUS adopted at its annual meeting in May, 1997. In addition, a May 1, 1999 "Committee Paper Investigating Full Preterism" by the Heartland Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) describes its "key heretical teachings." A website, "The Things Which Are To Come: Defending Our Hope For The Future" (http://members.truepath.com/tocome/) has been established expressly to counter the preterist "challenge to biblical orthodoxy" and contains articles (included with additional critiques in "The Preterist Archive") that speak of preterism with reference to Hymenaeus who, with Philetus, is said to "have wandered away from the truth" by contending that "the resurrection has already taken place" (2 Tim. 2:17-18).
Heresy is a serious charge, for if it be true, preterists are outside of Christ and in peril of eternal condemnation. Is heresy a justifiable charge against preterists? This article will examine the nature of heresy and the validity of the primary charges issued against preterism, particularly as enumerated in the ecclesiastical documents cited above. While there is precedent in church history for charging preterists with heresy on the basis of their view of the resurrection body, the charge would also hold against many other Christian theologians who are not preterists and widely considered orthodox. Preterism is not a monolithic movement, so that variations advocated by some preterists may perhaps fall outside the acceptable norms for faith. However, the preterist movement in general cannot be justifiably categorized as heretical, but instead as fundamentally orthodox. [4] Moreover, if Jesus was a preterist, then a church that is truly reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God must reform its understanding of eschatology to agree with the teachings of its Lord and admit the validity of preterism.
The Question of Heresy
Heresy is a rather difficult concept to define. The Greek word hairesis derives from harein, which means in the active voice "to take, win, seize," and in the middle voice "to select, choose." In classical literature, it is used to indicate the taking of a town in battle or the choice of a magistrate, for example. From this there develops in Hellenism the predominant objective use of the term to denote "doctrine" and especially a "school" of thought. Certain schools of thought are associated with a particular, or even a peculiar, doctrine which sets them distinctively apart from others. The use of the word to denote a school, or sect, is the one generally found in the NT, where the word is used of the "sect of the Sadducees (Acts 5:17) and the "sect of the Pharisees" (Acts 15:5), "the strictest sect" of the Jewish religion (Acts 26:5). The early church was referred to by this word, as "the sect of the Nazarenes" (Acts 24:5), as "the Way, which they call a sect" (Acts 24:14), and "this sect" everywhere spoken against (Acts 28:22). In fact, according to the standard Greek lexicon, the uses of the word for the Christian church "incline toward" the subsequent development of the word denoting a sect holding unacceptable views, i.e., a "heretical sect." [5] As a school of thought with particular doctrines not acceptable to the larger Jewish body, the church was initially viewed as a heresy. Clearly, the characterization of heresy hinges on who or what is considered authoritative. For the early church, the Lord Jesus and his designated apostles were authoritative, with the result that a charge of heresy by Jewish leaders meant little.
According to H. Schlier, the invocation of hairesis by the church "does not owe its meaning to the development of an orthodoxy. The basis of the Christian concept of hairesis is to be found in the new situation created by the introduction of the Christian ekklesia." [6] This is because hairesis "cannot accept" ekklesia and ekklesia "excludes" hairesis. While factions may be a demonstration of the works of the flesh (Gal. 5:20), factions also have positive value; "there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine" (1 Cor. 11:19). Historically, it is clear that the church has come to a greater refinement of its own doctrine through wrestling with divergent opinions. It is only when "false teachers . . . secretly bring in destructive opinions," whereby "they even deny the Master who bought them" and bring "swift destruction on themselves" (2 Pet. 2:1), that the heresy threatens the foundation of the church and must be excised. "After a first and second admonition, have nothing more to do with anyone who causes divisions (hairetikon anthropon, Tit. 3:10).
While Schlier may be technically and chronologically correct in contending that heresy was defined ecclesiologically rather than doxologically, there having been as yet no conciliar determinations of what constituted correct doctrine, it is nonetheless clear that there existed early in the church basic formulations of doctrine which served as standard confessions of faith, such as the hymns and baptismal formulas found in the NT (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:3-7; Phil. 2:6-11; 1 Tim. 3:16). [7] For the present discussion it should be noted that none of these confessions contains any statement of the resurrection of the flesh or a physical second advent of Christ. These traditional doctrines are instead based on subsequent biblical interpretation and, with all human endeavors, are "subject to limitation by man's finiteness and sinfulness." [8] Assertions by critics of preterism of "what is universally defined in the New Testament as a resurrection of the flesh" and that, "in eternity, to have affirmed the physical second Advent will be essential," [9] presume divine infallibility for their potentially fallible interpretations. There is no unequivocal biblical assertion for either statement and both are variously attested in subsequent statements of faith. In the ante-Nicene church fathers reference is made to a "rule of faith" (regulae fidei). Ignatius of Antioch (Epistle to the Trallians, ch 9 [ANF 1:70]) sets forth circa 107 the essence of the faith:
Be deaf, therefore, when any would speak to you apart from (at variance with) Jesus Christ [the Son of God], who was descended from the family of David, born of Mary, who was truly born [both of God and of the Virgin . . . truly took a body; for the Word became flesh and dwelt among us without sin . . .], ate and drank [truly], truly suffered persecution under Pontius Pilate, was truly [and not in appearance] crucified and died . . . who was also truly raised from the dead [and rose after three days], his Father raising him up . . . [and after having spent forty days with the Apostles, was received up to the Father, and sits on his right hand, waiting till his enemies are put under his feet]. [10]
Writing about 180, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, enlarges upon Ignatius' rule with statements which presage the Apostles' Creed (Against Heresies bk 1, ch 10, sec 1 [ANF 1:330-332]). Notable for the present discussion are his statements on "the resurrection of the dead, and the bodily assumption [ensarkon) into heaven of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and his appearing from heaven in the glory of the Father, to comprehend all things under one head, and to raise up all flesh of all mankind." [11] While there is no temporal element attached to the appearing, there is a stronger emphasis on the resurrection of the flesh. In the Latin recension (Against Heresies bk 3, ch 4, secs 1-2), Irenaeus' use of venturus, the future active participle of the Latin venir, "to come," linguistically denotes nothing more than the time after the principal verb, so that "shall come in glory," while surely understood by Irenaeus to mean a future coming, does not require the speaker as the point of time reference, but simply denotes an occurrence following Christ's suffering and rising again. The same may be said of subsequent uses of venturus by Tertullian and subsequent Latin writers.
At the beginning of the third century Tertullian introduced the phrase "resurrection of the flesh" (De Virginibus Velandis, ch 1), [12] though this does not appear in all his statements (not in Against Praxeus, e.g.). The statement of Lucian of Antioch around 300, says nothing concerning the resurrection of the dead (or flesh), but simply speaks of the representative nature of Christ's resurrection ("he rose for us") and accents his coming again (palin) in judgment. With the received form of the Apostles' Creed, "the resurrection of the flesh" (carnis resurrectionem) becomes more normative, in accord with its earlier as well as subsequent versions as a Roman baptismal symbol (c. 341). Notwithstanding, Schaff translates carnis with "body," leaving "flesh" in brackets, with a note that, while "older English translations of the Creed had the literal rendering flesh (caro, sarx), by which the ancient Church protested against spiritualistic conceptions of the Gnostics," this may be misunderstood in a grossly materialistic sense, while the resurrection of the body is unobjectionable; comp. 1 Cor. xv. 50." [13] "Resurrection of the body" remains the standard English translation of this statement in the Apostles' Creed.
The original Nicene symbol of 325 speaks more simply yet of Christ "raised the third day" and "coming to judge the living and dead," with no reference whatsoever to individual resurrection. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, which is what is regularly referred to as the Nicene Creed, speaks in the same simplicity, with the addition of the expected "resurrection of the dead" (resurrectionem mortuorum). Sandlin's confident assertion that "all orthodox Christians in all sectors of the church echo Tertullian" in insisting on the "restoration of the flesh" cannot be sustained. [14] Contrary to his virulent assertions, a materialistic resurrection and a physical second advent are not even mentioned, let alone "a prime tenet [of] Nicene orthodoxy." [15]
In the early church fathers, then, hairesis became a technical term for a view hostile to the church. Initially, it is viewed as any adherence to a philosophy that does not accord with the established teachings of the church as maintained by the bishop (Ignatius, Epistle to the Ephesians, ch 6 [ANF 1:52]). It involves mixing Jesus Christ with "their own poisonous teachings," such as the denial of his virgin birth, his passion on the cross, his resurrection, his divinity, or his distinction from the Father and Spirit in the one God (Ignatius, Epistle to the Trallians, ch 6 [ANF 1:68]). Any corruption of Christian teaching due to either Greek or Judaizing influences must be repudiated (Ignatius, Epistle to the Philadelphians, ch 6 [ANF 1:82-83]).
Beginning with Ignatius, the first century bishop of Antioch, and continuing on in the other early church apologists, pagan philosophy is viewed as the origin of heresy. Heresy denotes a sect hostile to Christianity because of "an inner relationship between heretics and the secular philosophical schools or Jewish sects," particularly Gnosticism. [16] "Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy," says Tertullian (Prescription Against Heretics, ch 7 [ANF 3:246]). Hippolytus (Refutation of all Heresies, introduction [ANF 5:9]) believes heretical doctrines "derived their origin from the wisdom of the Greeks, from the conclusions of those who have formed systems of philosophy, and from would-be mysteries, and the vagaries of astrologers." In similar fashion, the accusation of heresy against preterists is sometimes made on the basis of a supposed "low view of the body," being "the old error of Platonism." [17]
It must be noted, however, that the attempt to condemn a view by association with a particular philosophy has occasionally fallen prey to arbitrariness, as, for example, in the case of Hippolytus' assertion that Marcion obtained his system from Empedocles. [18] Furthermore, while Hippolytus and other apologists condemned certain views because of their purported derivation from Plato or Aristotle, outstanding theologians within church history have oft depended heavily on these philosophers, Augustine on Plato and Thomas Aquinas on Aristotle, to cite but two obvious examples. Moreover, when it is recognized that a standard modern criticism of early theology is that the fathers themselves depended too much on Greek lines of thought, it seems evident that derivation from pagan philosophy is a two-edged sword that cuts against orthodoxy as well as heresy and may depend largely on the one wielding the sword. [19] Indeed, it has even been suggested that the very idea of orthodoxy evinces a Greek mind set, with "Greece the source of the true damnosa hereditas." [20] It must suffice to say that, where philosophy serves as an aid (but not a presupposition) to understanding and systematizing theology in a way coherent with Scripture, it is to be admitted. Those theologians who claim to eschew philosophy are sometimes the ones most shaped by it, as perhaps most notably in the case of Karl Barth. Heresy has also been defined on the basis of its etymology as a choice against the rule of faith. A heretic is condemned for false doctrines, Tertullian says, "because he has himself chosen that for which he is condemned," having made a "choice of that which another has introduced of his private fancy" (Prescription Against Heretics, ch 6 [ANF 3:245-246]). Heresy is thus a private opinion contrary to received knowledge and based on ambiguous passages in Scripture. Irenaeus, for example, mocks the Gnostic attempt to posit a god above the Creator by reference to "ambiguous passages of Scripture. . . . For no question can be solved by means of another which itself awaits solution; nor, in the opinion of those possessed of sense, can an ambiguity be explained by means of another ambiguity, or enigmas by means of another greater enigma, but things of such character receive their solution from those which are manifest and consistent, and clear" (Against Heresies, bk 2, ch 10, sec 2 (ANF 1:370]). Tertullian appears exasperated in arguing against the heretics of his day because of their propensity to use ambiguous texts:
They rely on those which they have falsely put together, and which they have selected, because of their ambiguity. Though most skilled in the Scriptures, you will make no progress, when everything which you maintain is denied by the other side, and whatever you deny is (by them) maintained. As for yourself, indeed, you will lose nothing but your breath, and gain nothing but vexation from their blasphemy (Prescription Against Heretics ch 1 [ANF 3:251]).
Because "a controversy over the Scriptures can, clearly, produce no other effect than help to upset either the stomach or the brain," Tertullian would "oppose to them this step above all others, of not admitting them to any discussion of the Scriptures" (Ibid., ch 15 [ANF 3:250-51]). "Our appeal, therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures," Tertullian says, but rather to "the true Christian rule and faith," since "there will likewise be the true Scriptures and expositions thereof, and all the Christian traditions" (Ibid., 19 [ANF 3:251-252]). Christ delivered the faith to the apostles, who deposited it in the churches, with the result that all opinion which has no such divine origin and apostolic tradition is ipso facto false. [21] Truth is thus distinguished from falsehood not only by reference to apostolic authority and tradition, by but chronology, for there is "the priority of truth, and the comparative lateness of falsehood" (Ibid., ch 31 [ANF 3:258]).
This tack continues to be employed by those who denounce preterism, despite the preterist appeal not to ambiguous passages but rather to clear time references indicating the coming (parousia) of Christ within his generation. Rather than reconvene this exegetical discussion, however, Sandlin acerbically asks:
You criticize the Hymenaeans' confessional critics for insufficient exegesis. Whose exegesis would you prefer? I could proffer exegesis of orthodox Christians for the last 1800 years. It is not a question of a void of exegesis but of pitting a peculiarly modern and heterodox exegesis against the exegesis of the last 1800 years. Mark it down: every assault on Christian orthodoxy (like Hymenaenism) by an appeal to a supposedly unconditioned modern exegesis does not pit the Bible against the creeds, but a warped, modern understanding of the Bible against an understanding of the Bible over the last 1800 on a points [sic] critical to the Faith." [22]
Lateness of doctrinal formulation, however, has never satisfied to settle biblical debate. Both the Reconstructionists' postmillennialism and the dispensational premillennialism against which they also inveigh are modern eschatologies, the former in its modern form owing much to Daniel Whitby (1638-1726) and the latter to J. N. Darby (1800-1882). On the other hand, the prevalent chiliasm of the early church fathers has not rendered it more credible. It is fundamental to the Reformed approach "not [to] despise the interpretations of the holy Greek and Latin fathers, nor reject their disputations and treatises concerning sacred matters as far as they agree with the Scriptures; but we modestly dissent from them when they are found to set down things differing from, or altogether contrary to, the Scriptures. . . . And in the same order also we place the decrees and canons of councils. Wherefore we do not permit ourselves, in controversies about religion or matters of faith, to urge our case with only the opinions of the fathers or decrees of councils; much less by received opinions, or by the large number of those who share the same opinion, or by the prescription of a long time" (2nd Helvetic Confession, ch 2). Rather, assent depends on "the judgments of men which are drawn from the Word of God."
The idea of an accepted interpretation of Scripture, which constitutes the tradition of faith, was memorably formulated by Vincent of Lerins in the fifth century. "On account of the number and variety of errors, there is a need for someone to lay down a rule for the interpretation of the prophets and the apostles in such a way that is directed by the rule of the Catholic church. Now in the Catholic church itself the greatest care is taken that we hold that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all people." [23] This consensus fidelium, "the consensus of the faithful," became a highly influential way of interpreting the Bible as well as an essential antidote to heresy, though the aforementioned early statements of faith show aspects of apparently acceptable diversity, particularly concerning the nature of the resurrection body. This "fencing of Scripture" with a rule of faith embodied in a particular tradition, coupled with the authoritarianism exemplified in Tertullian, eventuated in the Roman Catholic Church's rife condemnation of peoples who questioned its authority and held ideas which fell outside accepted norms, particularly during the Inquisition. In the twelfth century, Peter Waldo and his followers, called Waldensians, were condemned simply for making the Scriptures available in the common tongue and preaching the gospel apart from papal authorization. The Beguines, groups of women in twelfth-century France who lived together for the purposes of economic self-sufficiency and a religious vocation, dedicated to chastity and charity, were condemned simply for existing without men, making them suspect to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The followers of Francis of Assisi were condemned for embracing voluntary, absolute poverty. Each of these groups were condemned largely for socio-political reasons, not doctrinal ones.
In the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe's insistence that the sole criterion of Christian doctrine is Scripture, his translation of the NT into the common English tongue in 1382, and his attack on the papacy and transubstantiation as unbiblical, resulted in his condemnation at the London Blackfriars Council in 1382 and forced retirement from teaching. The Lollards, lay preachers who continued to proclaim his ideas throughout England, were condemned by the statute De Haeretico Comburendo ("On the Burning of Heretics") forced through Parliament in 1401, which made the proclamation of Lollard ideas a capital offense.
The Bohemian reformer John Huss propagated Wycliffe's views. Huss and those who followed him, called Hussites, were charged as heretics, though they saw themselves as devoutly orthodox Christians. Huss was executed in 1415 for promoting the lay reading of the Bible in the common language, believing lay people had the ability to interpret the scriptures for themselves. He had also condemned the immorality of the priesthood and had wanted to raise clerical ethical standards in order to address the financial abuses and sexual immorality which continued to plague the church. He had supported giving all Christians full communion at a time when only priests were allowed to receive the cup. He had opposed the papal selling of indulgences. This all stemmed from his insistence that the Bible took precedence over Church leaders and councils. Though he questioned the Church's authority, he stated at his trial that he would obey the Church completely if it could prove his statements erroneous. This statement condemned him in itself because he trusted his own ability to reason rather than the Church's authority. [24]
Although Huss was condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake, he was a champion of reform and prefigured the Reformation. It is hardly unexpected, then, that a century later Martin Luther was perceived as an adherent of Hussite heresy. At the Leipzig disputation in 1519, Luther was asked by Johannes Eck about Huss and, while Luther did not go as far in stating his agreement with Huss at that point as he would later, he did acknowledge the "most christian" nature of the Hussite faith, despite its departure from Christian unity. [25] Less than a year later, the pope demanded that Luther recant and his books be burned, the papal bull Exsurge domine specifying forty-one heresies in his writings. A similar kind of bull is issued by Reconstructionists against preterists today, evidenced in West's injunction that, "if a church unwittingly carries Hymenaen books," they "should be torched or removed immediately." [26] How different is this kind of bull from the open-mindedness of C. H. Spurgeon, who said of The Parousia written by preterist J. Stuart Russell, it "has so much of truth in it, and throws so much new light upon obscure portions of the Scriptures, and is accompanied with so much critical research and close reasoning, that it can be injurious to none and may be profitable to all." [27]
The arrogant authoritarianism of the pope did not dissuade Luther, for on December 10, 1520, he threw the bull into a fire outside the Elster gate in Wittenburg with the words, "Because you have destroyed God's truth, may the Lord destroy you today in this fire." [28] On January 3, 1521, the pope issued the bull of excommunication Decet romanum pontificem, declaring Luther a heretic outside the law and subject to death. Luther was summoned to appear before the Diet of Worms where, on the evening of April 18, 1521, he made his famous stand:
Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise, here I stand, may God help me. Amen. [29]
Many other allusions could be made to Catholic charges of heresy, such as the silencing of Galileo following his trial for heresy in 1633, with a tentative conclusion being that, save for the great christological and trinitarian formulations of the ecumenical councils, the concept of heresy has generally been in the eye of the beholder, particularly the tyrannical Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages, and often has shown itself in an authoritarian recalcitrance against biblical faith. [30] Catholic retrenchment following the Reformation, summarized in the slogan semper eadem ("always the same"), became a key element in the polemic against Protestantism. In the eyes of the Catholic Church up till Vatican II, Protestants in toto had departed from the purported unity of teaching throughout the ages and thus "had forfeited their right to be considered orthodox"; as "an innovation," it was "heterodox for that very reason." [31] That, of course, has never affected Protestants unduly, since Reformation confessional statements regularly reprise the sola scriptura principle and consider all conciliar formulations to stand under that unique divine authority.
While Reformation confessions continue to repudiate ancient trinitarian and christological heresies, such as "the damnable and pestilent heresies of Arius, Marcion, Eutyches, Nestorius, and such others as did either deny the eternity of his [Christ's] Godhead, or the truth of his humanity, or confounded them, or else divided them" (Scots Confession, ch 6), conciliar pronouncements are placed under the absolute authority of Holy Scripture. "The reason why the general councils met was not to make any permanent law which God had not made before, nor yet to form new articles for our belief, nor to give the Word of God authority; much less to make that to be his Word, or even the true interpretation of it, which was not expressed previously by his holy will in his Word; but the reason for councils, at least of those that deserve the name, was partly to refute heresies, and to give public confession of their faith to the generations following" (Scots Confession, ch 20).
In the Protestant system, the authority of symbols, as of all human compositions, is relative and limited. It is not co-ordinate with, but always subordinate to, the Bible, as the only infallible rule of the Christian faith and practice. The value of creeds depends upon the measure of their agreement with the Scriptures. In the best case a human creed is only an approximate and relatively correct exposition of revealed truth, and may be improved by the progressive knowledge of the Church, while the Bible remains perfect and infallible. . . . Any higher view of the authority of symbols is unprotestant and essentially Romanizing. Symbololatry is a species of idolatry, and substitutes the tyranny of a printed book for that of a living pope. [32]
Critics of preterism, oft beginning their condemnation with allusion to the creeds, [33] would thus do well to rethink their commitment to Reformation principles. Sola scriptura meant that everything believed must have a sufficient basis in Scripture alone. While "the idea of a 'traditional interpretation of Scripture' . . . was perfectly acceptable to the magisterial reformers," their stipulation was "that this traditional interpretation could be justified" on the basis of Scripture. [34] This is what Luther's "stand" made clear: "Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason," "I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the word of God." [35]
The Reformers did not, as critics of preterism imply, approach their faith and work with a facile repristination of catholic orthodoxy. When they upheld the Apostles' Creed as the core of Christian belief, for example, they did so by way of some reinterpretations of traditional dogma, as is particularly evident in their divergent teachings on the "descent into hell," for which there were given at least three distinct meanings, and their views of "the holy catholic Church," for which Luther even substituted "Christian" for "catholic." [36] If it is insisted that each article of the creeds is essential to salvation, what is to be made of the Eastern Church's failure to include "the descent into hell" and "communion of saints" in its versions of the Apostles' Creed, or its failure to hold to the filioque added by the West to the Nicene Creed?
Whose version of these creeds and whose interpretation of their respective statements (including also the difference in them on the resurrection of the body or of the dead) must be held in order to be saved? If a creed is a universally recognized statement of faith, it seems clear there must be some latitude for difference of interpretation as to what certain statements mean and, in some cases (e.g., the descent into hell), whether they are even to be included. Preterists maintain that this also holds true for the eschatological aspects of the creeds. Inasmuch as heresy has primarily to do with a denial of the principle that God has provided redemption in Christ, [37] it may be maintained that preterism stands fully within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy as seeing that redemption fully accomplished by Christ.
Are Preterists Guilty of Hymenaeus' Heresy?
Probably the most common characterization of full-preterism is an association with Hymenaeus, one of two spoken of in 1 Tim 1:20 for having "made shipwreck of their faith," and so "delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme." In 2 Tim. 2:17-18, Hymenaeus and Philetus, are condemned for having "swerved from the truth by holding that the resurrection is past already" and "upsetting the faith of some." The Christian Reconstructionist camp has been particularly vociferous in castigating preterism as "Hymenaeanism." [38] If Hymenaeus and Philetus believed "the resurrection is past" and preterists believe the parousia occurred in A.D. 70 with the coterminous resurrection of the dead, there might appear to be sufficient similarity to validate the characterization of preterists among those spoken of in the NT who believe "the resurrection is past." Some preterists have responded to this by noting that Hymenaeus and Philetus were speaking of something as "past" which was still future, namely the decisive events surrounding A.D. 70 and were therefore rightly condemned for leading others astray, whereas preterists are arguing that the parousia and resurrection viewed as having occurred in A.D. 70 are only "past" from a standpoint after that date, the completion of the biblical canon, and the completion of redemption in the release of the church/kingdom/temple of Christ from the cultic encumbrances associated with the temple in Jerusalem. True as this is, such a response fails to understand the basis of the condemnation of Hymenaeus and Philetus as proto-Gnostics. Thus, a closer examination of the biblical historical milieu will make it clear that such a characterization or association of preterists with Hymenaeus is based on a superficial reading of the text and is, if anything, an indictment of the interpretive methodology utilized in such criticism.
There can be little doubt that Hymenaeus and Philetus were part of the Christian community who had embraced proto-Gnostic tendencies and were therefore removed from the community for fear that they would wrongly influence the church. Gnosticism was a widely varied movement, but its essential features included: (1) a radical cosmic dualism that rejects this world and sees the body as a prison from which the soul longs to escape; (2) a distinction between an unknown transcendent true God and the creator Demiurge usually identified with the OT God; (3) belief that the human race is essentially divine, a spark of heavenly light imprisoned in a material body; (4) a myth, often of a premundane fall, accounting for present human suffering; and (5) the saving knowledge (gnosis) by which deliverance is accomplished in the release of the enlightened to their heavenly origin. [39] Gnostic anthropology, which contrasted the Christian view of humanity as a psychosomatic union with a dualism involving a pre-existent spark of divine light imprisoned in evil flesh, correspondingly entails, as Bultmann notes, "a contrast in eschatology" wherein the true divine self, nurtured by gnosis and the sacraments, is released at death from the bodily prison to journey through the angelic aeons back to the Light. This stands in stark contrast to the Christian conception of the resurrection of the dead and the last judgment. Finally, "these differences entail a contrast in christology, since Gnosticism cannot acknowledge the real humanity of Jesus. Apparent humanity to a pre-existent heavenly being is only a disguise; if it does not insist upon declaring Jesus' flesh and blood to be only seemingly a body, it has to make a distinction between the Redeemer and the historical person Jesus and assert some such thing as that the former was only transiently united with the latter (in the baptism) and left him before the passion." [40]
It has been noted by commentators that there are points of contact with Paul in some of the Gnostic tenets. According to Paul, the entrance into the Christian life in baptism is a dying and rising again with Christ (Col. 2:12; 3:1-3), with the result "that you have been set free from sin" (Rom. 6:18, 22) which leads to death. While this was only a portion of Paul's teaching, it was congenial to those whose basic mind set was contoured by Greek dualism to think of the body as evil and undeserving of a resurrection.
Hymenaeus, Philetus, and their companions, then, we may suppose, were teaching a form of Christianity which was essentially Greek rather than Jewish in its eschatology, which accepted only half of Paul's doctrine, rejecting belief in a general resurrection and insisting that the only valid meaning which the word 'resurrection' could have would relate to the baptismal experience when the Christian mystically emerged from the waters of regeneration, having been buried with Christ and raised to newness of life. This supernatural endowment with the Spirit meant that the Christian had already achieved victory over death. [41]
Irenaeus appears to have such a heresy in mind in speaking of Menander, who declared that "the primary Power" was upon him, making him "a saviour, for the deliverance of men," that "the world was made by angels," and that, "by means of that magic which he teaches, knowledge to this effect, that one may overcome those very angels that made the world; for his disciples obtain the resurrection by being baptized into him, and can die no more, but remain in the possession of immortal youth" (Against Heresies, bk 1, ch 23, sec 5 [ANF 1:348]). This idea is apparently also attested in the late second-century apocryphal book The Acts of Paul (and Thecla, 3:11), where Demas and Hermogenes say, "we shall teach thee concerning the resurrection which he says is to come, that it has already taken place in the children whom we have, and that we are risen again in that we have come to know the true God." [42] Finally, there are also clear attestations of the Hymenaean heresy in the Gnostic books unearthed since World War II at Nag Hammadi. The Treatise on Resurrection (late second-century) advises, "do not think in part, O Rheginos, nor live in conformity with this flesh for the sake of unanimity, but flee from the divisions and the fetters, and already you have the resurrection" (I, 4, 49, 10-15). [43] The Exegesis on the Soul (c. 200 A.D.) aligns regeneration with baptism, when the soul "received the divine nature from the Father for her rejuvenation, so that she might be restored to the place where originally she had been. This is the resurrection that is from the dead" (II, 6, 134, 5-15). [44] Finally, The Gospel of Philip (mid third-century) appears to link the resurrection not simply with baptism, but with chrism, a special anointing with light: "Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing. So also when speaking about baptism they say, 'Baptism is a great thing,' because if people receive it they will live. . . . However, it is from the olive tree that we get the chrism, and from the chrism, the resurrection" (II, 3, 73, 1-20). [45] As Berkouwer says, "The heresy referred to in 2 Timothy 2:18 should be understood as a form of spiritualism, which believed that the transition from death to life and to the resurrection from the dead had already been completed through regeneration," [46] particularly by way of association with baptism.
It should already be clear that there is no convergence between preterism and this Gnosticism. To my knowledge, preterists all believe in the goodness of God's original creation (including the body), in the unity of God as revealed in Scripture, in the fall of humanity in Adam, and the need for Jesus Christ, God incarnate in hypostatic union, to redeem sinners by his substitutionary atoning death upon the cross. Moreover, preterists in general uphold the resurrection of Christ and of humanity in a transformed body, their primary divergence with traditionalists being over the nature of the resurrection body. This is well brought out by Ed Stevens who, in responding to the characterization of preterists as embracing the error of Hymenaeus and Philetus, asks how this early church could have surmised that the resurrection had already taken place, if it held to the resurrection as the resuscitation of the dead body? Paul could easily have undercut such a supposition by appeal to bodies still in their tombs, but "Paul doesn't challenge their concept of the nature of the resurrection, but rather their timing of it." [47]
Are Preterists Guilty of Heresy on the Nature of the Resurrection Body?
There is little disputing the fact that most of the early church fathers held to the resurrection of the very flesh in which one died. As early as 140, the pseudonymous 2 Clement 9:1-4 insists that "this flesh" will be raised. [48] This is also seen in Irenaeus and Tertullian, as was mentioned above, both emphasizing the intermediate descent into hades of believers. It would also seem to have been made an ultimatum in the Athanasian Creed, which asserts that at the coming of Christ "all men shall rise again with their bodies," a statement which, with all the others (including the descent into hell), constitutes "the Catholic Faith: which except a man believe faithfully [truly and firmly], he can not be saved." [49]
Adumbrations of an alternative position not requiring the reassembling of all prior fleshly components may perhaps be seen in Justin Martyr already in the early second century. In his First Apology (ch 19 [ANF 1:169]), he notes, "if we were not in the body," it would appear incredible "that from a small drop of human seed bones and sinews and flesh be formed into a shape such as we see. . . . But as at first you would not have believed it possible that such persons could be produced from the small drop, and yet now you see them thus produced, so also judge ye that it is not impossible that the bodies of men, after they have been dissolved, and like seeds resolved into earth, should in God's appointed time rise again and put on incorruption." While Kelly cites this as an example of the reassembling of all components, it may be more in keeping with subsequent thinking, now perhaps even predominant, which sees the resurrection not as the reassembling of all previous components in the same flesh, but as a transformation of the material body based on the slightest continuity with the previous body. [50]
Since my previous article "Jesus the Preterist" dealt at some length with the problems associated with the reassembling of the material corpse, these will not be restated here. What bears repeating, however, is that recourse to divine omnipotence as a resolution of these problems is a sacrificium intellectum and ultimately fideistic, for by making demands of faith which cannot be rationally explained or defended any religious claim can stand beyond analysis and yet be required by some magisterium. Contrariwise, Christian theology has always insisted on the reasonableness of faith, on the importance and indeed necessity of rationally defensible demonstrations of what is to be believed. [51] Christianity's philosophical, theological, and apologetic aims at systematic coherence require more in terms of rational explanation than mere recourse to divine omnipotence and a God of the gaps (deus ex machina). Moreover, inasmuch as there are two books of revelation, one in creation and the other in Scripture, which must be coherently explained, any procedure which neglects consensual scientific understanding in dogmatic insistence upon a particular view of the resurrection body, for instance, hardly merits serious attention, let alone a claim to authority.
For example, one of the questions which seems particularly problematic for the material continuity notion is the stage of human being that is to be resurrected and preserved for all eternity. Will it be the stage of the body at death with all its wrinkles and decay, or the stage after a terribly disfiguring accident? Generally some more pristine point of life is the stage that is purported to be preserved, but when is that? How will those who have had no such state be resurrected, like the aborted fetus? These are not trivial matters. Tertullian responded by saying, "any loss sustained by our bodies is an accident to them, but their entirety is their natural property. In this condition we are born. Even if we become injured in the womb, this is loss suffered by what is already a human being. Natural condition is prior to injury. As life is bestowed by God, so is it restored by Him" (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch 57 [ANF 3:589-90]). Contemporary understanding of genetic disorders, however, would seem to militate against the easy notion that all disorder is "injury" to some naturally good condition--some disorders are congenital, transmitted from the parents and present from the moment of conception in the DNA. Tertullian's response also does not cohere with his own insistence on material continuity, for the resurrection of Christ would indicate that the resurrected have the very same bodies they had at the moment of death and that, however enhanced, those bodies will retain the disfiguring characteristics received prior to death, as in the case of Jesus' pierced hands, feet, and side which he showed to the disciples (Luke 24:39; John 20:20, 25-27). [52] Thus, questions raised against the reassembling of the material corpse must be answered more satisfactorily than they have been if this view is to be insisted upon, as it is so acerbically by the Reconstructionists, for example.
The third-century theologian Origen recognized the inadequacy of appeal to divine omnipotence in the ridicule it received from his protagonist, Celsus: "what kind of body is that which, after being completely corrupted, can return to its original nature, and to that self-same first condition out of which it fell into dissolution? Being unable to return any answer, they betake themselves to a most absurd refuge, viz., that all things are possible to God" (Against Celsus bk 5, ch 14 [ANF 4:549]).
In his effort to defend the resurrection of the body in a more rationally satisfying way, Origen suggested the existence of a form of the body which underlay all the various changes throughout life and gives to the individual his personal identity:
Because each body is held together by [virtue of] a nature that assimilates into itself from without certain things for nourishment and, corresponding to the things added, excretes other things . . ., the material substratum is never the same. For this reason, river is not a bad name for the body since, strictly speaking, the initial substratum in our bodies is perhaps not the same for even two days.
Yet the real Paul or Peter, so to speak, is always the same -- [and] not merely in [the] soul, whose substance neither flows through us nor has anything ever added [to it]--even if the nature of the body is in a state of flux, because the form [eidos] characterizing the body is same, just as the features constituting the corporeal quality of Peter and Paul remain the same. According to this quality, not only scars from childhood remain on the bodies but also certain other peculiarities, [like] skin blemishes and similar things. [53]
Origen here accepts the concept of the body as flux, expressed in his day in the Galenic version of humoral theory. He maintains that the body's constantly changing mass of matter cannot rise, since it is not even the same from day to day. He sees identity as preserved in the corporeal form (eidos), not in the material body. Bynum says, "This eidos is a combination of Platonic form, or plan, with Stoic seminal reason (an internal principle of growth or development). A pattern that organizes the flux of matter and yet has its own inherent capacity for growth, it is (although I introduce the modern analogy with extreme hesitation), a bit like a genetic code." [54]
Origen's task having been "the twofold one of expounding the truth against (a) the crude literalism which pictured the body as being reconstituted, with all its physical functions, at the last day, and (b) the perverse spiritualism of the Gnostics and Manichees, who proposed to exclude the body from salvation,"it is in Kelly's judgment "from this point of view the resurrection becomes comprehensible:"
The bodies with which the saints will rise will be strictly identical with the bodies they bore on earth, since they will have the same 'form', or eidos. On the other hand, the qualities of their material substrata will be different, for instead of being fleshly qualities appropriate to terrestrial existence, they will be spiritual ones suitable for the kingdom of heaven. The soul 'needs a better garment for the purer, ethereal and celestial regions'; and the famous Pauline text, 1 Cor. 15, 42-4, shows that this transformation is possible without the identity being impaired. [55]
"Origen thus solved the problem of identity more successfully than any other thinker of Christian antiquity." [56]
Theology subsequent to Origen tended along two lines, either in reaffirmation of the traditional dogma of the reassembling of the material body, defended chiefly by appeal to divine omnipotence, or in response to Origen, both negatively or positively. Positively, "Origen's heady sense of the potency and dynamism of body remained enormously attractive, particularly to Eastern theologians, over the next 150 years." [57] Among "those constructive thinkers who strove, some of them along cautiously Origenistic lines but omitting what was most characteristic of Origen's teaching, to understand the mystery at a deeper level than the crude popular faith allowed," as Kelly puts it, were Gregory of Nyssa (albeit inconsistently), Evagrius, Aphrahat, and Cyril of Jerusalem. [58]
Negatively, those who opposed Origen did so largely on the basis of the critique delivered by Methodius of Olympus, who died circa 311. Methodius argued that Origen's eidos had to do only with the resurrection of a bodily form, not the body as such. He viewed Origen's "form" as analogous to a mold, external to the body, which must inevitably perish with its fleshly contents, thus requiring a material reassembling in the resurrection. Methodius's argument against Origen was based, however, on a misinterpretation of Origen's eidos as external, and his own insistence "that both material continuity and complete bodily integrity are necessary for resurrection" led him to a view of identity that denied the reality of change and process. "Thus Methodius takes identity to lie in material continuity, aware that he does so by simply denying empirical evidence of organic change," [59] even going so far as to deny that digestion occurs! Whatever the deficiencies of Methodius' argumentation, his view of material reconstitution, buttressed further by the latter Jerome and Augustine, appears to have prevailed. In 553, at the fifth ecumenical council, the Second Council of Constantinople, fifteen anathemas were issued against Origen, the tenth of which states: "If anyone shall say that after the resurrection the body of the Lord was ethereal, having the form of a sphere, and that such shall be the bodies of all after the resurrection; and that after the Lord himself shall have rejected his true body and after the others who rise shall have rejected theirs, the nature of their bodies shall be annihilated: let him be anathema." The eleventh anathema further states: "If anyone shall say that the future judgment signifies the destruction of the body and that the end of the story will be an immaterial psysis [sic], and that thereafter there will no longer be any matter, but only spirit (nous): let him be anathema." [60]
On the basis of the fifth ecumenical council at Constantinople, there is, therefore, clear historical precedent for condemning the preterist view of the resurrection body and apparently any other than a material reconstitution. Notwithstanding, it seems equally clear that any such condemnation would disingenuously disinherit many who have been considered stalwarts of biblical faith and orthodoxy, for it is evident that at least by the mid-nineteenth century an Origenist view of the resurrection body, with identity based on an organizing principle and not material continuity, came to have as much plausibility or more than the ancient insistence on material reconstitution. In what Stephen Davis calls "the modern view," a person can be given a whole new body at the resurrection and still be the same person who died. While similarity is generally stressed, this may be maintained through the pattern God remembers as he "gives [to each] a body just as he wished" (1 Cor 15:38). Although this is not the traditional view, "it does seem at least a possible answer to standard anti-resurrection arguments that ask how a body dead for, say, a thousand years can possibly be reconstituted" [61] and certainly seems to satisfy the issues involved better than those who argue so vigorously for material continuity.
In his Systematic Theology (1871-1873), Charles Hodge allows the validity of several possible theories of identity, saying the Bible teaches no specific doctrine. Thus, (1) there may be a complete restoration of all bodily substance in the resurrection body, so that as many hairs as have been shaved off, or nails cut, shall return into that substance from which they grew (Augustine), a view which, if true, must be submitted to despite its manifold difficulties in the confidence of God's omnipotence; or the new resurrection body may be formed out of even a ten thousandth portion of the particles of the earthly body; (2) the soul may inform the body which, if this be true, "we should not stop to inquire or to care how many particles of the one enter into the composition of the other"; (3) there may be "an identity independent of sameness of substance," so that "our future bodies, therefore, may be the same as those we now have, although not a particle that was in the one should be in the other." [62] A. A. Hodge, rightly believing "all truth is one, and of God, and necessarily consistent, whether revealed by means of the phenomena of nature or of the words of inspiration," viewed the scientific knowledge of that day as proving "that neither the identity of the body of the same man from youth to age, nor the identity of our present with our resurrection bodies consist in sameness of particles." [63]
James Orr maintained that the doctrine of the resurrection does not involve any such belief in the reassembling of decayed material particles.
The solution lies, I think, in a right conception of what it is which constitutes identity. Wherein, let us ask, does the identity even of our present bodies consist? Not, certainly, in the mere identity of the particles of matter of which our bodies are composed, for this is continually changing, is in constant process of flux. The principle of identity lies rather in that which holds the particles together, which vitally organises ond [sic] constructs them, which impresses on them their form and shape, and maintains them in unity with the soul to serve as its instrument and medium of expression. It lies, if we may so say, in the organic, constructive principle, which in its own nature is spiritual and immaterial, and adheres to the side of the soul. At death, the body perishes. It is resolved into its elements; but this vital, immaterial principle endures, prepared, when God wills, to give form to a new and grander, because more spiritual, corporeity. [64]
After quotation of 1 Cor. 15:36-38 and allusion to Origen, Orr thus considers it clear, "first, that identity consists only in a very minute degree, if at all-and then only accidentally-in identity of material particles; and, second, that the real bond lies in the active, vital principle which connects the two bodies" of soul and body. [65]
Similarly, in his Systematic Theology A. H. Strong said, "the Scripture not only does not compel us to hold, but it distinctly denies, that all the particles which exist in the body at death are present in the resurrection-body. . . . So long as the physical connection is maintained, it is not necessary to suppose that even a germ or particle that belonged to the old body exists in the new." [66] In his estimation, "Bodily identity does not consist in absolute sameness of particles during the whole history of the body, but in the organizing force, which, even in the flux and displacement of physical particles, makes the old the basis of the new, and binds both together in the unity of a single consciousness." [67]
Again, no less a stalwart of Reformed orthodoxy than Louis Berkhof seems to prefer the concept of a pattern:
We are told that even now every particle in our bodies changes every seven years, but through it all the body retains its identity. There will be a certain physical connection between the old body and the new, but the nature of this connection is not revealed. Some theologians speak of a remaining germ from which the new body develops; others say that the organizing principle of the body remains. Origen had something of that kind in mind; so did Kuyper and Milligan. If we bear all this in mind, the old objection against the doctrine of the resurrection, namely, that it is impossible that a body could be raised up, consisting of the same particles that constituted it at death, since these particles pass into other forms of existence and perhaps into hundreds of other bodies, loses its force completely. [68]
These testimonies from widely recognized conservative and evangelical theologians over the past two centuries as to the legitimacy and even preferability of an Origenist view of identity would seem to emasculate the significance of the sixth century anathemas against Origen on this point as they are applied against preterists.
Modern science has abandoned any notion of permanence in the world as a whole. Although Einstein's relativity theory did nothing to undermine the heritage of scientific determinism, the dawn of the twentieth century heralded its end with the formulation of quantum mechanics through the work of Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, and others. Quantum theory "predicted no specific observable events, but rather a number or range of possible results along with formulae for predicting statistically the chances of obtaining each possible result in any given instance." [69] Probability, not permanence, has become the new paradigm for understanding the physical universe, which includes the present and future conditions of the human body. Any theological statement on creation's past, present, or future that wants to be taken seriously (and not dismissed as fideistic) must interact with contemporary scientific analysis in the common attempt to understand the other book of divine revelation, what Francis Bacon called "the book of Nature." [70] Those who have so interacted have a common understanding of the resurrection body as transformed, based on an organizing principle. This is surely the reason why the Origenist concept has gained ground in the last two centuries and why appeal to the church fathers is simply not sufficient. Acknowledging that there are "very few atoms left from among those that were there a few years ago," physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne says, "The real me is the immensely complicated 'pattern' in which these ever-changing atoms are organized. It seems to me to be an intelligible and coherent hope that God will remember the pattern that is me and recreate it in a new environment of his choosing, by his great act of final resurrection." [71]
While some conservatives insist on repristinating the traditionalist view of the reassembling of the material components, they do so against trends in scientific as well as biblical understanding and reveal a motivation not based so much on truth, understanding and validation as on pugnacity, invective, and demagoguery. As to the question of the resurrection body and the "tension between physical and spiritual approaches," a more evenhanded statement by a renowned evangelical asserts, "the debate is widely regarded as speculative and pointless." [72] Although preterists cannot so easily dismiss the issue, since an Origenist concept is pivotal to their view that the resurrection indeed began with the parousia in A.D. 70, there is ample biblical attestation for their view among theologians and biblical scholars not aligned with their general eschatology to repudiate any purported heresy. [73] Indeed, the view advocated by preterists that the resurrection occurs at death has received confessional validation: "The Dutch catechism of 1966 says: 'Life after death, therefore, is something like the raising of the new body. This resurrection body is not the same as the molecules and atoms that have entered the earth. We awake-or are woken-as new human beings.' The 'New Book of Belief' (Das Neue Glaubensbuch) of 1973 puts it more precisely: 'The individual resurrection from the dead takes place with, and at, death.'" [74] As long as some aspect of identity with the person laid in the grave is admitted, therefore, no preterist may justifiably be charged with denying the resurrection of the body.
Are Preterists Guilty of Heresy on the Final Judgment of Humanity?
It was during the Tannaitic period, commencing with the Christian era and culminating in the death of Patriarch Judah in the early third century, that the body of traditional Jewish law (Mishnah) was redacted and promulgated under his authority. [75] The messianic expectation of this period was threefold, consisting of this world (olam hazzeh), the days of the messiah, and the future world (olam habba). This traditional Jewish perspective was altered, however, by the apocalypticism stemming from the latter second century B.C. This led to some fluidity in Jewish eschatological hopes for the occurrence of the resurrection. The books of Daniel and Enoch seem to place the resurrection at the beginning of the messianic kingdom, while the apocalypses of Baruch (30:1-4) and 4 Ezra (7:26-33) place it at the end and conceive it as the event which serves as a transition from the days of the messiah to the future world (olam habba). The question posed in 4 Ezra 6:7, "what will be the dividing of the times? Or when will the end of the first age and the beginning of the age that follows?" was commonly asked. This is also evinced in the disciples' question to Jesus at the beginning of the Olivet Discourse (Matt 24:3; Mark 13:3-4; Luke 21:7), which Sproul rightly admits was fulfilled in Christ's parousia at the destruction of Jerusalem, an event which culminated the messianic age and ushered in the kingdom/church in all its fulness. This coming is to bring judgment upon the generation that crucified Jesus, as Jesus himself predicts: "so that upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation" (Matt 23:35-36), a summary of all the innocent blood of God's faithful shed from the beginning of the OT canon to its conclusion, 2 Chronicles (wherein Zechariah, son of Jehoida, is murdered in 24:20-22) being the last book in the Hebrew Bible.
Thus, a collective judgment is being imposed on Jesus' generation in the destruction of Jerusalem, in addition to a declaration on those that preceded, as is attested in Jesus' comparisons of the severity of judgment of previous peoples with that of the generation on which he will come (Matt 11:16-24 [comparison to Sodom, destroyed in Gen 19:24-25, early second millennium B.C.]; 12:39-42 [comparison to Nineveh, to whom Jonah preached, spared in eighth or seventh century B.C., and Queen of Sheba, 1 Kings 10:1, from tenth century B.C.). Particularly interesting are the last two statements in Matthew concerning the people of Nineveh and the Queen of the South (Sheba), both of whom are said to "rise at the judgment with [meta, "in the company of, alongside") this generation and condemn it." This emphasis on the gathering of ancient peoples in judgment culminates in the gathering of the nations before Christ at his parousia: "when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats" (Matt 25:31-32). Again, if the Olivet Discourse has to do with the destruction of Jerusalem and that is the time "when the Son of Man comes in his glory," then it follows ineluctably that Christ's judging of the nations occurred then, as well.
H. J. Schoeps observes that Paul's eschatology is also founded on this idea of that he was living at a turning point, "the fulfillment of the ages" (1 Cor 10:11), save that he saw in the resurrection of Jesus the commencement of the eschaton.
In this transitional epoch in which Paul and his churches are living-we are now accustomed to call these decades of his activity the 'apostolic age'-the olam hazzeh and the olam habba are already intermingled, thus indicating that the Messianic age of salvation has dawned. This mingling of the two ages constitutes the distinctive eschatological standpoint of Pauline theology. Thus it becomes clear that Paul could only link up with that form of eschatology which transferred the resurrection of the dead to the end of the Messianic age (cf. Baruch ch. 20-30; 40:3; IV Ezra 7:26-44). The Messianic age itself, the age of the apostle, then becomes an interim stage, a transition to the olam habba. [76]
While this interim period of the messianic age was placed at four hundred years in 4 Ezra 7:28 and Apocalypse of Baruch 29-30, "older traditions concerning the days of the Messiah fix a very short interval for the interim period, namely, forty years (R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus; Bar. In Sanh. 99a; R. Aqiba: Midr. The. On Ps. 90:15; Tanch. Eqeb 7b, Pes. Rabb. 4a)." [77] Similarly, the Qumran materials indicate such a period, as, for instance, the Damascus Document: "from the day of the gathering in of the unique teacher, until the destruction of all the men of war who turned back with the man of lies, there shall be about forty years" (CD xx, 14-15), and a Commentary on Ps 37:10: "I will stare at his place and he will no longer be there. Its interpretation concerns all the evil at the end of the forty years, for they shall be devoured and upon the earth no wicked person will be found" (4QPsalms Pesher [4Q17, ii, 6-8]). [78] While space does not allow further attention to the exegetical and systematic development of Pauline eschatology, the aforementioned texts, coupled with the eschatological thrust of the Olivet Discourse on which Pauline thought here must be based, provide sufficient attestation for Schoeps' assertion that "Paul probably held the widespread notion that the interim stage of the Messianic kingdom would be only of short duration" and that, like Aqiba and Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, "he will have reckoned with forty years at most." [79] Thus Paul's insistence on the imminence of Christ's coming judgment on unbelievers and deliverance of his people (1 Thess 1:10; 5:1-9; 2 Thess 1:4-10, e.g.), an idea echoed by the other NT writers (Rom 13:11-12; 2 Tim 4:8; Heb 10:23-39; Jas 5:8-9, e.g.). The NT accent on the imminency of God's judgment on the disobedient and his deliverance in Christ of his elect compels the exegetical conclusion that the judgment commenced with the destruction of Jerusalem after the forty year messianic reign and henceforth continues upon all who die: "just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment" (Heb 9:27; cf. also 2 Cor 5:1-10, where Paul is viewed by some interpreters as hoping for "the heavenly body at death," with the judgment of Christ apparently immediately thereafter [80]). Clearly, Jesus, Paul, and the apostles all viewed the judgment as imminent. The issue is simply whether they were mistaken in this expectation.
Preterists thus affirm that, following upon his coming in glory in the destruction of Jerusalem, Christ exercises judgment after death upon all. While they generally regard the Great White Throne Judgment depicted in Rev 20:11-15 as the same depicted in Matt 25:31-46,81 they maintain that all will be judged at death when they are resurrected.
Conclusion
"Orthodox faith and orthodox doctrines are those that honor God rightly," whereas "heresy" refers to the false doctrine of those who "have abandoned the faith" and move others to do the same. [82] If heresy has to do with a denial of the principle that God has provided redemption in Christ, as McGrath says, it is hard to understand how preterism can be viewed as a heresy, for it affirms "the orthodox faith and orthodox doctrines" in all points as expressed in the great creeds and confessions while endeavoring to "honor God rightly" by insisting that the consummation of God's redemptive purpose in Christ's parousia has not been frustrated or postponed, but rather accomplished according to the clear chronology set forth in the NT. Preterists believe this evidence is so compelling that they are willing to suffer the accusations and condemnations of others in their effort to affirm the words of the apostle Paul: "let God be true, and every man a liar. As it is written: 'So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge'" (Rom 3:4). They invite others seriously interested in investigating these matters to do so from within the great tradition for the furtherance of the reformation, recognizing the need of the church to be "reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God."
Endnotes
[1] "Jesus the Preterist: A Review of R. C. Sproul's The Last Days According to Jesus," Quidlobet On-Line Journal of Christian Theology and Philosophy 1:6 (September, 1999), http://www.quodlibet.net/otto-sproul.shtml.
[2] Ibid.
[3] http://www.chalcedon.edu/report/97sep/s16.htm. This critique, together with other views of preterism favorable or critical, can be found in what can be called the clearinghouse of information on the subject, "The Preterist Archive" (http://preteristarchive.com/).
[4] In his "Introduction to Preterism" (http://preteristarchive.com/Preterism/fp-dennis_01.html), Todd D. Dennis, a proponent of preterism, makes the unfortunate statement, "Preterist theology is unorthodox." Though he takes orthodox to mean "generally accepted, conventional," the word derives from the Greek orthos, "correct," and doxa, "opinion," and has to do with what is correct, not merely conventional, though the two are typically conjoined, as, e.g., "conforming to the usual beliefs or established doctrines, especially in religion; proper, correct, or conventional; as, orthodox ideas, opposed to heterodox" (Webster's 20th Century Dictionary). Such misstatement is too common among preterists, which feeds the frenzy against them. Surely if, as Dennis says, preterism is "a Biblical theology," then it must not be characterized or caricatured as unorthodox or heterodox.
[5] Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (2nd ed.; William F. Arndt, F. Wilbur Gingrich, Frederick W. Danker [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979]) s.v., "hairesis" (a, b [23-24]). The corresponding term in rabbinic Judaism, min, first denoted "trends and parties within Judaism," but soon came to be applied to those groups which separated from rabbinic Judaism. "At the end of the 2nd century the term acquired a new meaning, being applied not so much to the members of a sect within Judaism as to the adherents of other faiths, and esp. Christians and Gnostics" (H. Schlier, "hairesis," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament [ed. Gerhard Kittel; Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1964] 1:182).
[6] H. Schlier, "hairesis," TDNT, 1:182-183. So Harold O. J. Brown who, after describing the church as an ark, says: "Heresy not merely undermines one's intellectual understanding of Christian doctrine, but threatens to sink the ark, and thus to make salvation impossible for everyone, not merely for the individual heretic" (Heresies: The Image of Christ in the Mirror of Heresy and Orthodoxy from the Apostles to the Present [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984] 2).
[7] Philip Schaff notes all of what he calls "Scripture confessions" in The Creeds of Christendom (1931; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990 rep.) 2:3-8; so also John H. Leith, Creeds of the Churches (rev. ed.; Atlanta: John Knox, 1973) 12-16.
[8] Leith, Creeds of the Churches, 11; cf. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 2:4-9
[9] Jim West, "The Allurement of Hymenaen Preterism: The Rise of 'Dispensable Eschatology'," (http://www.chalcedon.edu/report/97/jul/s09.htm) and Andrew Sandlin, "Hymenaeus Resurrected," http://www.chalcedon.edu/articles/article_hy_preterist.html, respectively.
[10] This translation is taken from Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 2:11-12, where the Greek text is included, the brackets signifying the longer Greek recension.
[11] Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 2:13-14.
[12] Ibid., 2:17.
[13] Ibid., 2:46n.
[14] Sandlin, "Hymenaeus Resurrected," http://www.chalcedon.edu/articles/article_hy_preterist.html.
[15] Sandlin, "Against Hymenaeanism: The Charity of Intolerance," http://www.chalcedon.edu/articles/article_hy_Hymenaen.html. Moreover, "the corporeal aspect" of Christ's resurrection is not even mentioned "in Nicene Trinitarianism and Chalcedonian Christology" (http://www.chalcedon.edu/article_hy_Hibbard.html). See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 57-65.
[16] Schlier, "hairesis," TDNT, 1:183.
[17] West, "The Allurement of Hymenaen Preterism."
[18] E. Blackman, Marcion and His Influence (London: SPCK, 1948) 67; although the attempt has been made since the early apologists to find the source of Marcion's dualism in Iranian speculation, Jewish cosmology, Gnosticism, and philosophers as diverse as Plato, Empedocles, and Epicurus, R. Joseph Hoffmann says that the effort to find "philosophical analogues for marcionite doctrines is characterized by contradiction and inconsistency" (Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity [Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984] 11). There is little doubt that Marcion's views were largely derived from his peculiar reading of the Pauline epistles; cf. also Randall E. Otto, "The Problem with Marcion: A Second-Century Heresy Continues to Infect the Church", Theology Matters 4 (1998):1-8.
[19] "The eleventh and twelfth centuries saw a growing conviction that philosophy could be an invaluable asset to Christian theology," in demonstration of the reasonableness of faith and in systematizing doctrine. By about 1270, Aristotle was established as "the Philosopher," whose ideas furnished the presuppositions for theology, particularly through the influence of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. "This development came to be viewed with concern by some later medieval writers, such as Hugolino of Orvieto. A number of central Christian insights seems to have been lost, as a result of a growing reliance upon the ideas and methods of a pagan philosopher," in particular the nature of justification (Alister E. McGrath, Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought [Oxford: Blackwell, 1998] 119).
[20] Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church (1895; rep. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995) xiv, 137-138.
[21] The appeal to apostolic tradition as the precedent for true faith is also found in Tertullian's contemporary, Clement of Alexandria (Stromata ch 17 [ANF 2:554-555]).
[22] Sandlin, "Against Hymenaeanism."
[23] McGrath, Historical Theology, 44.
[24] http://topaz.kenyon.edu/projects/margin/heresy.htm is a good on-line source for material on medieval heresies, including the Beguines, the Cathars, the Hussites, the Joachimites, the Lollards, and the Waldensians. Brown's Heresies is probably still the unsurpassed compilation.
[25] J. H. Merle D'Aubigne, History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (1846; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976 rep) 173.
[26] West, "Allurement of Hymenaen Preterism," 10.
[27] J. Stuart Russell, The Parousia: A Study of the New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord's Second Coming (1887; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983 rep.) back cover.
[28] I have on the wall of my study a copy of an 1834 print by H. Schile, based on an original by H. Brückner, entitled "Das Leben Martin Luther's und die Helden der Reformation!," the central focus of which is a portrayal of Luther defiantly casting this bull into the fire, surrounded by banners featuring the words of his famous "battle hymn," "Eine feste Burg ist unsere Gott!" and "Das Wort Gottes bleibt in Ewigkeit. Amen."
[29] Cited from Lewis W. Spitz, The Renaissance and Reformation Movements (St. Louis: Concordia, 1971) 2:329.
[30] Thus, the closest Brown comes to giving his "definition of heresy" is the practical significance "involved in the doctrine of God and the doctrine of Christ" (Heresies, 2-3).
[31] McGrath, History of Theology, 173.
[32] Schaff, Creeds, 1:7.
[33] Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., "A Brief Theological Analysis of Hyper-Preterism," (http://www.chalcedon.edu/report/97/jul/s09/htm), for example, begins by saying, "First, hyper-preterism is heterodox. It is outside of the creedal orthodoxy of Christianity. No creed allows any Second Advent in A.D. 70. No creed allows any other type of resurrection than a bodily one."
[34] McGrath, Historical Theology, 182.
[35] The radicality of Luther's thrust is seen in his reevaluation of the basis of authority itself, relegating four books of the NT (Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation) to a subordinate status because they did not "put forth Christ" (treibet Christum). Though the other Reformers did not follow Luther here, they did all relegate the apocryphal books to a non-canonical, as opposed to a deuterocanonical, status, striking against its recognized status of over twelve centuries
[36] On the various interpretations of "the descent into hell," see Randall E. Otto, "Descendit in inferna: A Reformed Review of a Creedal Conundrum," Westminster Theological Journal 52 (1990):143-150 where, because of the dubious intention behind its insertion and "the fact that no consensus has been or apparently can be reached on its meaning," the recommendation is made to omit it from liturgical use; cited with approval by Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994) 594. For the Reformers' reinterpretation of the nature of the communion of the saints and holy catholic church, see, e.g., McGrath, Historical Theology, 200-207.
[37] Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction (2nd ed.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1997)175-176.
[38] E.g., the series "Articles by Andrew Sandlin concerning the Hymenææn Heresy" at http://www.chalcedon.edu/articles/article_hy.html. Also, Jim West, "The Allurement of Hymenaen Preterism." The condemnation by the RCUS also uses this terminology.
[39] Robert McL. Wilson, "Gnosticism," The Oxford Companion to the Bible (ed. Bruce M. Metzger; New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) 255-256.
[40] Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951) 1:168.
[41] Fred D. Gealy, "II Timothy," Interpreter's Bible (ed. George A. Buttrick; New York: Abingdon, 1955) 11:491; so also A. T. Hanson, The Pastoral Epistles (New Century Commentary; ed. Matthew Black; Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1982) 136; A. J. B. Higgins, "The Pastoral Epistles," Peake's Commentary on the Bible (ed. Matthew Black; Nashville: Nelson, 1962) 1005, et al.
[42] Edgar Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha (ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965) 2:356-357. In the Letter of the Corinthians to Paul 2:11-15, a question is raised about two men named Simon and Cleobius who say "that God is not almighty, and that there is no resurrection of the flesh, and that the creation of man is not God's (work), and that the Lord is not come in the flesh, nor was he born of Mary, and that the world is not of God, but of the angels." The Letter of Paul to the Corinthians 3:33 follows with assurance that "you also who have been cast upon the body and bones and Spirit of the Lord shall rise up on that day with your flesh whole."
[43] James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977) 53. In his Introduction, 4-5, Robinson specifically mentions the texts here cited as standing in line with the persons and views mentioned in 2 Tim. 2:16-18.
[44] Ibid., 185.
[45] Ibid., 140-141, 144.
[46] G. C. Berkouwer, The Return of Christ (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1972)184.
[47] Stevens, Stevens [sic] Response to Gentry (Bradford, PA: Kingdom Publications, 1997) 34-35.
[48] The additional citations found in J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978) 463, from The Epistle of Barnabas, ch 21 and 1 Clement 24:6 do not yield the evidence he cites for "rising again in the self-same flesh."
[49] Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 2:69-70. This creed is generally acknowledged to be later than Athanasius on the basis of the doctrinal formulations; J. N. D. Kelly dates it sometime after 428. The creed was never officially recognized by the Eastern Church, and its condemnatory language has been a source of controversy. See "Athanasian Creed," The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2nd ed.; ed by F. L. Cross, E. A. Livingstone; New York: Oxford University Press, 1983)100-101.
[50] Origen makes much of the seed analogy in Against Celsus, bk 5, chs 18-19 (ANF 4:550-551). After asserting that "the resurrection of the flesh, which has been preached in the Churches," is "more clearly understood by the more intelligent believer," he states, "neither we, then, nor the holy Scriptures, assert that with the same bodies, without a change to a higher condition, 'shall those who were long dead arise form the earth and live again'," as Celsus supposed. Origen then refers to Paul's seed analogy in 1 Cor. 15:15:42-44.
[51] See, e.g., Diogenes Allen, The Reasonableness of Faith (Washington: Corpus, 1968) and his chapter by the same name in Christian Belief in a Postmodern World: The Full Wealth of Conviction (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1989) 128-148.
[52] In his Sentences, Peter Lombard used Eph 4:13 to contend that each would rise with "the stature he had (or would have had) in youth," i.e., about the age of thirty, since that is when Christ died! (C. W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1995] 122).
[53] Origen, Fragment on Psalm 1:5, in Methodius, De resurrectione, bk 1, chaps 22-23, cited in Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 64.
[54] Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 66.
[55] Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 471.
[56] Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 66.
[57] Ibid., 68.
[58] Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 475-479; Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 71-86.
[59] Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 71.
[60] "The Anathemas Against Origen," II. Constantinople. A.D. 553," Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 14:319. While Origen may have taught the resurrection body was spherical, "there is no explicit mention of this notion in any of Origen's known writings" (McGrath, Christian Theology, 559).
[61] Stephen T. Davis, Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993) 113.
[62] Hodge, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1981 rep.) 3:775-780.
[63] A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1875) 442-444.
[64] James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World as Centering in the Incarnation: Being the First Series of Kerr Lectures [1891] (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907) 331-332.
[65] Ibid., 332.
[66] Augustus. H. Strong, Systematic Theology (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1907)1019.
[67] Ibid., 1020.
[68] Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1941)723.
[69] Mark W. Worthing, God, Creation, and Contemporary Physics (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 27.
[70] The lack of engagement with consensual science on matters related to cosmology is abundantly evident in the "Committee Paper Investigating Full Preterism" of Heartland Presbytery (PCA), which claims preterism has a "defective view of Adam and Eve's pre-fall bodies" and of cosmology in general for its contention that death and decay in the physical realm do not derive from Adam's fall. The issues here devolve into a PCA requirement for a young earth, since Adam's fall is required as the basis of all death. This not only stands against their own conservative Reformed tradition as expressed in Warfield and Machen, both of whom believed in an old earth and the "day-age" theory (cf. David N. Livingstone, Darwin's Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1987]), it also stands obscurantly against the entire current of contemporary science, which can be well harmonized with the old-earth view (cf., e.g., Don Stoner, A New Look at an Old Earth: What the Creation Institutes are Not Telling You About Genesis [Paramount, CA: Schroeder, 1992]).
[71] John Polkinghorne, Quarks, Chaos, & Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1997) 92-93.
[72] McGrath, Christian Theology, 560.
[73] E.g., Murray J. Harris, From Grave to Glory: Resurrection in the New Testament, Including a Response to Norman L. Geisler (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus-God and Man (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977) 74-88.
[74] Cited by Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 103.
[75] The standard work on Judaism in this period remains the three volume work by George F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966).
[76] Schoeps, Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961) 99.
[77] Ibid., 100.
[78] Citations are from Florentino G. Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994) 46, 203, respectively. Schoeps also says the idea is portrayed in "the final war against the sons of darkness," presumably the War Scroll, but I have not been able to verify that citation.
[79] Schoeps, Paul, 101.
[80] C. S. C. Williams, Peake's Commentary, 970; cf. also Harris, From Grave to Glory, 205-214.
[81] Thus, e.g., Russell, The Parousia, 523-525.
[82] Brown, Heresies, 1.
Rev. Randall Otto is Pastor of Deerfield Presbyterian Church, Deerfield, NJ 08313, with a Ph.D. in Historical and Theological Studies from Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.
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Do you really believe in the words of the bible,of course I do lets see!!

2008-06-25T06:59:00.000-07:00

DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THE BIBLE?

In the area of Bible prophecy teaching, I have come to believe that much/most of it does NOT agree with the Word of God. The following has been written to stimulate your understanding of truth. It is NOT meant to be all inclusive of every aspect. Please read with an heart open to the Holy Spirit. Matthew 10:23: To His disciples: “- - you will not have gone through the cities of Israel before the Son of man comes.” This was meant for their lifetime. Do you believe it?
Matthew 16:27-28: “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. - - some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” Are any of the hearers alive today?
Matthew 24:29-34: Read verses 29-33. Vs. 34 “Assuredly I say to you, this generation (The one He was addressing.) will by no means pass away till all these things are fulfilled.”
Matthew 5:17-18: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets - - I came to fulfill. - - I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, (“Heaven and earth” was the ruling religious structure of the day.) One jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.” See: Hebrews 7:11-12, 8:13, 9:11-15, 9:23-26, Galatians 4:21-31. It was fulfilled and has ended! Matthew 26:64, Jesus speaking to the high priest, scribes and elders said: “- - hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” If they didn’t see Jesus as He said, then He was a liar. He spoke to people then alive. Do you believe it? John 21:22: “- - If I will that he remain (#3306 Greek: meno - to remain, tarry, abide, dwell) till I come, what is that to you?” (Literally: “while I am coming” - A.T. Robertson, Word Picture in the New Testament) Can you find John alive today? Did Jesus lie, or is our eschatology wrong? Romans 13:11-12: “- - for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed - - the day is at hand.” If you can call nearly 2000 years, NOW, NEARER, and AT HAND, then plain language means nothing. Perhaps the “futuristic” interpretation of prophecy is wrong, if not, then Paul was. 1 Corinthians 10:11 “- - they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come.” Paul was writing this to Corinthian believers. Something was to happen while they were alive. The end of the Jewish age with its temple, law and customs was to, and did come! Philippians 4:5: “- - The Lord is at hand.” (#1451 Greek: eggus- near, nigh, ready) Why would Paul say this IF it was not for them? Jesus, using the verb “eggizo” (#1448 - to bring near, cause to approach, to be near), said in Mark 1:15: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.” Do FULFILLED and AT HAND have new meanings? Were Paul and Jesus wrong, or is popular eschatology/prophecy wrong? Hebrews 9:26, 28, 10:37: “- - but now once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin - -.“Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many --- He will appear a second time - -. For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and shall not tarry.” Is more than 1900 years a little while? To “not tarry” means there will be NO LONG DELAY. Since this was spoken to humans, one must presume it is based on our idea of time. James 5:7-8: “Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. - - Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand.” Why would these people need to “establish” their “hearts” for something that was not in their life span? James 5:9: (- - Behold, the Judge is standing at the door!) Just how long do you expect He would stand? Perhaps for an aeon or two? 1 Peter 4:7: “But the end of all things is at hand.” (End - #5056 Greek: telos - the conclusion of an act or state. It denotes not only the ending of a departed state, BUT, the arrival of a complete or perfect one.) (At hand #1448: Greek: eggizo - to bring near, or cause to approach) Were Peter, Paul and Jesus wrong?
1 John 2:17-18: “And the world (#2889 kosmos- the order or arrangement of the day) is passing away - - Little children it is the last hour - -.” How could it be the “last hour” with the world/order “passing away” then, if we want to put it into the future? Rev. 1:2 “- - must shortly take place.” Vs. 3: “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.” Why tell the people then to read, hear and keep it, if doing so were not imperative for them? How often have you read these verses, and noted the significance of a then happening? Popular prophecy preachers tell us that these verses are IN THE FUTURE because they have misplaced Daniel’s last seven years from his 70 weeks. Imagine the stupidity of God in having a 70-week period, but putting the last half week of seven years off into a distant, and unconnected, time zone. The prophecy preachers can’t tell time, BUT GOD CAN AND DOES. The God we serve has always been on time, and is not confused like the world of religion. Such teachings have caused untold harm to many, me included! There is a plan and purpose that God is working out throughout the ages and it doesn’t necessarily fit in with the traditional views that have predominated man’s thinking. These views are called, amillennialism, post-millennialism, and pre-millennialism [with it’s many variations]. A forth view, Preterism, interprets the apocalyptic language of the early Christians in terms of their view about the changing of the covenants, from Law to Grace, from Death to Life, from the Old to the New, and that it ended the old theocratic nation of Israel, making way for the universal Christian faith and age. When we accept God’s big DONE, in many these areas, it frees us to “hear what the Spirit would say to the churches.” Books I would recommend reading are:
1. The Life and Works of Josephus. Read the section entitled “War of the Jews.” Josephus was a Jewish priest, and a military commander, whom the Romans captured. They authorized him to record the history of the wars between 66 and 70 A.D. He was present at the fall of Jerusalem, and the destruction of the temple, etc.
2. MATTHEW 24 FULFILLED, by JOHN BRAY. This is an in-depth study of Jesus’ prophecy, and is very well researched. One must also read Deuteronomy 28. Out of sixty-eight verses, forty-eight deal with the curses that would come if the "Covenant of the Law" was not kept. Josephus records the ultimate fulfilment of this. John Bray also has much to say about it.
Our title of, “Do You Really Believe the Bible?” is meant to challenge you to check out for yourself rather than just accepting the popular ideas called “prophecy teaching.” You may not understand everything, but IF you are honest with God, He will make the truth known to you as you are open to receive it. Please open your heart and mind to the Lord and he will be glorified as you do.

The Desperate view aka the Futurist view

2008-05-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

The futurist view in my eyes is hopeless and needs to be challenged not just accepted. Because it's a tradition that has blinded the believer and the hopeless building member about His coming. Saying he's coming soon! What does that mean soon to them a long time it has to be! This desperate view of his coming misleading verses after verses it's sad to say the lest people. But hiding and saying to you're self I don't want to deal with this remember 1Thess 5:21. Preterism is here to stay my friends. The reformation was so called "new" but it wasn't really new, it was God's Word that was suppressed by the ruling majority. That's how preterism is, It appears to be a new doctrine but it's not new. It has been suppressed by futurists! The desperate view will always to be desperate when it comes to "when" is this going to happen. I heard a street preacher in new york saying Jesus is coming soon. Press for time for work I was going to ask here what do you mean by soon. But the poor building member doesn't know what she was saying from the desperate view that is what she was taught. Two verses that desperate view uses to try to justify or changed the context of the hole new testament is scary. The no man knows the day and hour or thousands years as a day is weak. But when you're desperate one never knows what they might do do they. Maybe the apostles are still going threw the cities of Isreal until He comes in Matthew,10:23. Did Jesus ever give them "two" differernt signs for two different times in Matthew 24 I think not.Only in the desperate views minds that is. To start you need to go and ask your pastor what does soon mean. Most likely he will give you the same two verses I gave and at the same time say He's coming soon.

Sola Scriptura, Not Men, Councils, or Creeds!

2008-04-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

"Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures ... and my conscience is captive to the Word of God.... I cannot do otherwise."

* Based on Martin Luther's famous "95 Theses" that were posted on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517. Luther's document empowered and propelled the Protestant Reformation.

Preterism-Eschatology---What are your thoughts on the matter?

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