In my investigation of Christian theology to discover what is true and what is error I have learned of what may be egregious error in end-times opinion (a field called eschatology) held by numerous sects and denominations including the Seventh Day Adventists and our friends the Baptists. I should mention regarding Baptists that Baptist churches commonly have wide latitude interpreting scripture and thus that thought the Dallas Theological Seminary may propound wrong doctrine that does not mean that all Baptist hold to the error of pre-tribulationist opinion of the end times. Many evangelical churches also hold pre-trib paradigms based on misunderstanding the Revelation of the Apostle John. Surprisingly veritable monuments of church pulpits have propounded wrong doctrine for decades with the wrong belief that the tribulation is yet ahead and that a literal thousand year millennium is as well. The gross errors are understandable when one considers that so many learn theology subsequent to establishing careers and that selection of doctrine without reflection and meditation may be a norm rather than an exception.
Of course troubles, sorrows and even mass disasters may occur in the world people being as inept as they are on keeping peace, prosperity and a health environment together-yet that does not mean that it would entail a Christian-style tribulation.
In this blog post I will cover two topics at least; that the millennium and the 70 weeks of the book of Daniel. Actually I will go over a few more concepts including some of my philosophical ideas about the theory of knowledge. I have several quotations in a point-counter point way from theologians too.
Some theologians believe the 1000 year reign of the Lord mentioned in the Revelation is a literal thousand years with the Lord appearing in person in the flesh, others believe the millennium occurs with the Lord reigning from heaven. Post-millennialists regard the millennium as not a literal thousand years; instead
-quote”This is even more difficult to conceive of in light of our second observation: the mention of the thousand-year reign occurs in the most figurative and difficult book in all of Scripture. If it is a literal time frame, why is it that it is only mentioned in this highly symbolic book? It is a bit odd, too, that this time frame is so perfectly rounded and exact, which seems more compatible with a figurative view. Warfield is surely correct, when he comments "we must not permit ourselves to forget that there is a sense in which it is proper to permit our understanding of so obscure a portion of Scripture to be affected by the clearer teaching of its more didactic parts.... [T]he order of investigation should be fromthe clearer to the more obscure." But this hermeneutical principle has not often been honored. "Nothing, indeed, seems to have been more common in all ages of the Church than to frame an eschatological scheme from this passage,imperfectly understood, and then to impose this scheme on the rest of Scripture vi et armis." Clouse is correct about the place of the millennium in the
discussion: "These categories [amillennial, premillennial, post-millennial], although helpful and widely accepted, are in certain respects unfortunate as the distinctions involve a great deal more than the time of Christ's return.'
The proper understanding of the thousand-year time frame in Revelation 20 is that it is representative of a long and glorious era and is not limited to a literal 365,000 days. The figure represents a perfect cube of ten, which is the number of quantitative perfection. 81 The thousand here is no more literal than that which affirms God's ownership of the cattle on a thousand hills (Psa. 50: 10), or promises Israel will be a thousand times more numerous (Deut. 1: 11), or measures God's love to a thousand generations (Deut. 7:9), or expresses the desire for a thousand years in God's courts (Psa. 84: 10), or compares a thousand years of our time to one of God's days (Psa. 90:4). The millennial designation, then, is John's visionary portrayal of the kingdom of Christ, which was established at Christ's first coming. Revelation 20: 1 clearly establishes the passage as a vision; John opens with: "and I saw" (Rev. 20: la). This is strongly suggestive of its symbolic import and is evidence against a strictly literal interpretation of the one thousand years. In addition, the first event seen in the vision is the binding of the angel Satan with a chain, which surely is not literal (especially since His binding is shown to be spiritual elsewhere: Matt. 12:29 82 ). Revelation 20:4-6 speaks of the saints living and reigning with Christ, which is elsewhere presented as a spiritual reality in the present experience of God's people (l Cor. 13:21-22; Eph. 1:3; 2:6; Col. 3:1-2). This reigning of the saints with Christ on thrones pictures the kingdom of Christ, which is already established (cf. Chapter 11).83 His kingdom, then, is defined chronologically as a complete and perfect time. Besides, elsewhere the Second Coming of Christ is associated with "the end" (1 Cor. 15:23-24) and brings in "the last day": resurrection (John 6:39, 40, 44, 54). "Therefore, in view of the total absence of supporting evidence from the New Testament, it is exceedingly hazardous to claim that a thousand years intervene between Christ's coming and the end of the world on the grounds that Revelation 20 teaches a millennium."84
The millennial era has already turned out to be almost 2,000 years; it may continue another 10,000 or more for all we know. It is the perfect time of Christ's rule in His kingdom (Rev. 1:5) – a time that shall eventually result in the subduing of all nations.”end quote from Gentry's 'He Shall Have Dominion' pages 334-336
Fortunately I took a philosophy course on epistemology that gave me some insight into the nature of certainty about knowledge. Actually I spent a fair amount of time reading in the field beyond the course assignment of Plato's Theatetus and Wittgenstein's 'On Certainty' and Tractatus Logico Philosophicus'. I read Wittgenstein's Blue and Brown books that are basically about the construction of language and went on from that to discovery of the entire field of analytic and linguistic philosophy from the Vienna Circle with Wittgenstein, Carnap and others to the main point of divergence in the field in the 20th century with publication of A.J. Ayer's seminal work on the philosophy of empiricism named 'Language, Truth and Logic'.
The philosophy of empiricism was of course the basic criterion in defense of purely scientific reasoning on the basis of objective, empirically verifiable data. That is where the field of epistemology becomes terribly interesting; one gets into very technical points amount the nature of sense perceptions and the relationship of sense data to mind and logic.
Empiricists would divide knowledge into sense data input from empirical, real world information and subjective psychological content. The philosopher that demolished the theoretical validity of empiricism-W.V.O. Quine with the publication of his book 'The Two Dogmas of Empiricism', pointed out that it is actually not possible to classify sense data into such a fine duality. Quine wrote a number of brilliant works on the philosophy of logic, many of which I also read continuing development of the field of epistemology, language and certainty.
P.F. Strawson was another brilliant logician who wrote about the phenomena of empiricism and the division of valid content into subjective and objective content regarding empirical data. Strawson's book 'Individuals' is another book intensely illuminating the very technical subject-object analytic distinction of thought. Quine wrote a book with similar material named 'Word and Object'.
The development of analytic or linguistic philosophy during the 20th century paralleled the development of the rise of a more subjectivist philosophical school sometimes associated with Dewey and the post-modernist left. That movement has more political force than intellectual acuity and associates itself implicitly with evolution theory.
Evolution theory itself us used as a political philosophy itself today generally without rigorous logical consistency failing even to cohere with the scientific principles of evolution. For instance in one application of evolution as political philosophy...
On the subject of homosexual marriage a few years ago President Obama said that his position was 'evolving'. Consider though what evolution theory itself consists of (actually there are several threads to take including Lamarkian). Evolution theory comprises natural selection of the most fit species for a particular environment. It does not mean 'progressive change' for the better or something like that. Yet evolution as a word can be used to mean change-for-itself with certain characteristics of a continuum of change (like the aesthetic experience of daytime arising from dawn's early light to sunrise, morning, mid day, late afternoon light with the sun having passed two o'clock to sunset dusk and evening only to recur in a cyclic pattern the next day.
What President Obama probably did not mean was random phenomenal environmental selection of the most fit queer human beings for a particular environmental niche of urbanization and high-density population demographics and that his thought was evolving toward political sycophancy with one affirmative action constituency class for political expediency to get votes.
The idea of thought-itself as evolving through random selections to find an idea most suitable for a particular thought-niche corresponding to an empirical political or social situation is not a confidence builder for the accuracy or strength of human reasoning so far as I am concerned. I am not comfortable with the concept that anyone's thought should be a kind of random access data base that operates for-itself like a computer program working a bubble-sort to make the right result float to the top; that result is the result of the bias of pre-determined and willful selection rather than getting a randomly determined number to fit a niche.
It is easy to understand how viewing thought as a kind of lottery to discover the winning number or political opinion might be popular. Yet not to over-labor the point here about evolution theory having many meanings when it is employed as a political philosophy, I simply wanted to point out that there are many different ways to view evolution theory that tend to abnegate reason and will-even human intellect-as an intentional reasoning tool.
In the historical sense it is easy to understand how pre-millennialists lost sight of the truth about the Revelation and accurate eschatology. At least however pre-millenialists remained Christians even if grossly inaccurate ones regarding eschatology. Shoddy lottery style evolutionary logic does appear to be something of a social, historical normal occurrence though. People have often reasoned from historical or empirical circumstances from where they find themselves without much reflection.
If one considers the falsehood of 'The Donation of Constantine' and all of the social development that followed its acceptance until correction one can discern the way that social reality has a content and evolution apart from objective truth and facts not too uncommonly. America's present efforts to change the Syrian Government regime of Bashir Assad is profuse with crocodile tears about civilian casualties. While Muslim terrorists that are called Muslim moderates are trained by the United States, France and others to attack the Syrian Government when some blow-back of Muslim terrorist attacking France occurs the facts are warped by the U.S. Government and media to conform with the use-truth required for implementation of the policy of regime change in Syria. Social reality as an evolving use-truth means serving up falsehood to the public in order to further political goals. It is in this mess of political evolution theory where even lies are regarded as having no moral significance accept as they do not serve the insider political platform that the contemporary Christian finds his beliefs sharing a public social environment.
Thus it is important where, when and how Christians learn the facts about the Revelation and the way post-millennialism rolls back the error of pre-millennialism with its wrong judgments about apocalypse, tribulation and the anti-Christ being ahead. It isn't simply a matter of examining fact A or B or C and countering that as in a simple arithmetic argument of accounting. Fuzzy logic does prevail in historical and literary analysis-that is a somewhat higher I.Q. for the analysis and interpretation of data accurately can be helpful. If Christians are to win more converts ,in addition to a priesthood of believers serving themselves as primary agents for indoctrination of proselytes they need to have true rather than false eschatological ideas...that is they should have the post-millennial ideas that Gentry set out in 'He Shall Have Dominion'.
Returning to the idea of certainty. I ought to explain that epistemology and certainty has something of an element to it comparable to hermeneutics; they are comparable to computer operating systems with different architectures and programs for processing data. Epistemology however makes the effort determine what the most true grounds or operating system construction are and then employ that to understand life. Instead of being a particular system it is a meta-system method or approach to examining content subjectively and objectively. Plainly one should not want to dismiss knowledge as meaningless because it is circumstantially evolved junk no more meaningful than dirt clods.
Though people were initially made from dirt and Adamas means 'brown dirt', though star dust (dirt) is what everything and perhaps dreams too are made of, reasoning and logic still counts. The mind and it's place in nature is a real experience a little different than non-thoughtful dirt. In spite of a dirt foundation human beings have a spiritual nature a little like that of God whom is the pure Spirit proceeding anything constructed within a Universe or evolved within the dirt paradigm.
I took a photo of a dead tree recently that had broken and fallen over. It had been dead standing up for many years for various reasons involving forest regrowth a century ago, muskeg and too much water with a lot of acid content in the soil. Where the tree was broken off the cellular structure had already broken down so far as to be in effect nothing more than 'dirt'. People were grown a little like that themselves-and the idea that evolution of mankind physically from the world by the intelligent design of God is met by a too magical of response over-reaction by fundamentalists who thus vacate the field of accurate interpretation of the meaning of Genesis and creation theory to atheists and a few philosophically minded Christians. That means that theology becomes incapable of moving Christians back from the moral abnegation found in secular approaches to evolution as science. Churches such as the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and others accept the sin of homosexual marriage because they accept an atheist interpretation of evolution theory. The material and empirical facts of science added to the political expedience of an immoral philosophy in concentrating wealth permits a non-rational age of evolutionary political philosophy to grow with the logical reactions against that from the Muslim world including jihad against an immoral, decadent, self-destructive civilization.
I found it rather amusing that Ludwig Wittgenstein-the brilliant philosopher and son of Europe's most rich man, was a homosexual. While he was serving in the German army in Northern Italy in W.W. I he was writing the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus and in love with a British pilot who died in a plane crash eventually. That is really crazy stuff—yet a paradigm that political evolutionists would find satisfying I think. Bertrand Russell-an atheist philosopher of excellence and quite a decent fellow-got Wittgenstein a post at Cambridge where he wrote the Blue and Brown books on language philosophy. Russell after serving a prison sentence for opposition to the war eventually moved to California where he wrote 'The History of Philosophy'. Wittgenstein's book 'On Certainty' was a worthwhile project to write tough Wittgenstein himself was perhaps a little confused about many things and obviously a lost soul.
A theory of knowledge requires verification of truth. Science has some criteria for verifying truth and there is a verification model of truth for-itself-rather like disquotation theory of truth I think. A natural human trait is for people to accept what they know as true because they know it. An how one knows anything or examining the content of what one believes they know is an ancient philosophical endeavor as one finds in the Socratic dialogues.
Engelsma writes contra-post-millennialism. So like a juror perhaps one is expected to reach a verdict beyond a reasonable doubt or at least to the lower civil standard of a preponderance of evidence in support of one's opinion about Engelsma vs. Gentry. As I said at the start however I have a certain bias pro-Gentry in the matter having already read Gentry's two books. Engelsma's ideas seem like those of a pale shade complaining from the left-behind camp along the road after the Glory train has passed him by. Though he could have got aboard the glory train he had a fruit stand he thought he needed to defend. It is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
I want to make the point that this is all written respectfully of Prof. Engelsma-he does not have an easy job attacking post-millennialism...rather like the Jersey Generals vs the Harlem Globetrotters or Mr. Burger vs Perry Mason. One needs to have a Red team and counter-arguments to field-test discovered truth. Prof Engelsma has worked toward that end.
It seems evident that when numerous theologians with depth in Biblical scholarship and languages arrive on differing sides of opinion about the interpretation of the Revelation that certainty ought to be difficult to attain. Neither side ought reasonably to have complete certainty of correct interpretation when it is possible for theologians of similar educational backgrounds to arrive at such different conclusions. For one thing, it seems plain that regardless of one's particular Biblical hermeneutic used that the facts of the Revelation ought to be plain enough For theologians to be certain of the meaning of the Revelation rightly understood there ought not to be such a vast range of possible error, and if there is such a vast range then correspondingly the certainty of accurate interpretation ought to decrease somewhat.
So Englesma, pre-millenialists and select amillennialists that do not acknowledge Gentry's version of the Revelation could be comparable to believers in the flat earth theory or thee Ptolemaic systems who refused to accept the Copernican revolutionary insight. That is, anti post-millennialists must be in opposition on generally invalid grounds. The denial of evidence of a correct hermeneutic and interpretation of the Revelation is the foundation for the unbelief, and that is comparable to the denial of scientific insight given by Copernicus and Kepler on non-scientific or invalid scientific grounds. In any case certainty is conditional and relative simply because no human has infallible opinions about everything all of the time.
Before I move on from this explanation of ideas concerning certainty and the formation of true opinion I want to make a comparison of Biblical hermeneutic to computer programs, computer operating systems and to language lexicons.
One of the basic elements of computational logic is Boolean algebra and Boolean truth-tables. Language lexicons can be represented as a kind of truth table or matrices with a particular lexicon differing from other lexicons of other languages. A large part of finding truth is in locating the position in the truth table where the predicates intersect at a hypothetical object in order to determine if the value is true or false.
There is a much greater range for error when comparing different language lexical values obviously; the language elements were not designed to correspond to values in different lexicons. It is as if one did mathematics with inappropriate content in formulas mixing positive and negative numbers up together in ordered series wily nilly-the complete value assumptions of a given scalar field would change.
It is simply the beauty of language and logic tools after good philosophers of logic expressed it in various treatises that brings one to appreciate that respective language universes and hermeneutic universes of meaning may exist that produce their own unique values when the same material is input for theological deliberation. That does not mean that each are true. Science tends to value falsifiability as a verification tool for testing hypothesis and theory. For theologians that might be more a matter of verifying the hermeneutic with scripture, however determining the truth of the way to interpret the Revelation as preponderantly preterist or futurist requires consideration of historical elements as much as abstract hermeneutic calculation of the words of the Revelation as abstract meaning units with possibly different values.
In my opinion the preponderance of words of the Revelation interpreted in the light of first century history seem to well correspond to Gentry's paradigm written in 'The Beast of the Revelation'. In some ways it is more practical to consider that analogy and metaphor were used by John to describe near-future occurrences of real historically existing people, governments and powers rather than as distant future abstract mystical super-figure and space-referents, though the latter make for good movies should anyone in Hollywood need some script ideas.
Ordinarily people considering history may divide social and historical time into periods, ages or events. Inaugurated eschatology would be comparable to the Wisconsin Ice Age of thousands of years that had a start and and end, or maybe to Chinese civilization that began with the Shang era about 2000 B.C.. and continues today. So one might say that the inaugurated end of Chinese civilization began in 1948 approximately when Mao and the communist defeated the nationalists in war perhaps-if Chinese civilization were to evolve to extinction in a hundred years or so as a unit of a global corporatist empire with Chinese-human assets relocated to optimize production to Africa and South America and vice versa for the wealth for elites.
An inaugurated eschatology beginning in the first century A.D. continuing to the present and future just isn't an eschatology in any conventional sense of the term. It is needful to find an extra-dimensional context for the end times to cohere within normal times perhaps or to expand the usual times parameters to those of geology or evolutionary biological epochs. Actually post-millennialism might be alright with that, as might amillennialism, yet neither ought to consider the Kingdom of God era to be an end times. Better, for post-mils at least, the end times may occur all in ode day at the end of the secular Kingdom of God at some uncertain time in the future.
The term inaugurated eschatology is remarkably vague and challenging to define. Yet is has the virtue of quickly leading one's thought toward metaphysical study of what comprises the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God for-itself seems a little redundant or ancillary. God is God, and yet God also has a Kingdom-something like an annex perhaps. Maybe the Kingdom is a realm where contingent beings may exist in direct relation to God rather than in a nominally spiritually inert Universe of mass and energy. The kingdom of God in that sense could arise wherever or whenever God made His presence known. God doesn't need kingdoms-God includes all-possible kingdoms and all possible sets of configurations of mass, energy and forms of matter as expressions of His will for anything to exist. A kingdom of God is a comfortable or understandable referent term for a phenomenal place for contingent beings to experience the Creator. Even with that concept that I have inferred with logic and some reading inspiration-what the Kingdom of God is for amillennialists is still not plain to me.
Anthony Hoekema wrote in his 'Brief Sketch of Amillenial Eschatology'-
quote-“The kingdom of God is therefore both a present reality and a future hope. Jesus clearly taught that the kingdom was already present during his earthly ministry: “But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Mt. 12:28, NIV). When the Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God was coming, he replied, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, `Lo, here it is!’ or `There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Lk. 17:20-21). But Jesus also taught that there was a sense in which the kingdom of God was still future, both in specific sayings (Mt. 7:21-23; 8:11-12) and in eschatological parables (such as those of the Marriage Feast, the Tares, the Talents, the Wise and Foolish Virgins). Paul also makes statements describing the kingdom as both present (Rom. 14:17; 1 Cor. 4:19-20; Col. 1:13-14) and future (1 Cor. 6:9; Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5; 2 Tim. 4:18).”-end quote
I think a point that may be taken from this sort of study is that it is necessary to discovery what is true in amillennialism and post-millennialism rather than to accept one system entirely and refute entirely the other-since some of the planks cohere in each. One may however dismiss the pre-millennial point of view as generally invalid and even counter-productive to understanding the kingdom of God. Partial preterism largely negates the main points of pre-millennial eschatology.
http://www.the-highway.com/amilc_Hoekema.html
Reformed Amillennialism – An Introduction by Prof. David J. Engelsma
Reformed Amillennialism – Revelation 20 by Prof. David J. Engelsma
Reformed Amillennialism – Apostasy and Persecution by Prof. David J. Engelsma
Reformed Amillennialism – Matthew 24 – Part I by Prof. David J. Engelsma
Reformed Amillennialism – Matthew 24 – Part II by Prof. David J. Engelsma
Reformed Amillennialism – Matthew 24 – Part III by Prof. David J. Engelsma
Reformed Amillennialism – Matthew 24 – Part IV by Prof. David J. Engelsma
The Engelsma criterion of amillennialism seems to differ itself little from salient features of the pre-mill or pre-trib opinions in important respects. I believe those criteria were quite well refuted by Gentry in his two books on the Revelation and Post-Millennialism that I read for this eschatology course.
In fact it seems as if there may be two varieties of amillennialism; one is Catholic with a view of the Revelation possibly closer to protestant post-millennialism except notably for the role of the Pope in the temporal manifestation of the growing kingdom of God. The second variety of amillennialism is that expressed by Dr, Engelsma that is perhaps rather vague and uncertain in its foundations. Prof. Engelsma has the unenviable position of being a conservative defender of a traditional theological point of view that is perhaps somewhat vague in its origins and content.
Engelsma writes; ”Let us have the positions clearly in our mind.
Both are teachings about the last days. Both instruct the church as to what she can expect in the future before the second coming of Jesus Christ.
They differ radically.
Reformed amillennialism teaches the church, that is, us who believe and our children, to expect increasing lawlessness in the world, apostasy from the truth in the churches, the establishment of the kingdom of Antichrist over the entire world, and great tribulation for all those who fear God and keep His commandments. To such a world, thus fully developed in sin, will Christ return.”-end quote
Gentry pointed out rather humorously that the position such as stated above seems to be an agenda for atheist anti-Christians to follow rather than Christians. He noted that it is as if atheist and/or the church of Satan expected the world to be fully Christian before the return of Satan. Anticipating the world to be 'fully developed in sin' before Christ returns is rather pre-mill in outlook and seems to entirely disregard Gentry's 'The Beast of the Revelation' preterism that appears to me to be far more sound than the metaphor and hyperbole super-spatial thousands of years from the first century tribulation of Nero and Titus that was developing while John was imprisoned at Patmos paradigm of interpretation of the Revelation that pre-mills have and that must inform Prof. Engelsma for his erroneous eschatological viewpoint.
Engelsma also writes in his Introduction; quote-“Post-millennialism in Reformed and Presbyterian circles holds out quite a different prospect. Gradually, the gospel will convert the majority of the world’s inhabitants. True Christians will possess political power in every nation, controlling all aspects of the life of the nation so that there will be a genuinely Christian culture. This will be the “Christianizing,” as they put it, of the world. The human race will obey the law of God, at least outwardly (for many will remain unconverted). There will be earthly peace worldwide. The result will be unprecedented material prosperity. Poverty will disappear. Disease will be checked. Crime will be virtually non-existent.”-end quote
Consider that there are already about a billion people that are nominally Christian at least and that the ability of those Christian to communicate the gospel is increasing-ought they to stop sharing the good news of Jesus Christ and stand by as quietist in order the sin may fully develop?
Christianity steadily increased its numbers in the first and subsequent centuries rather than experiencing a decline. In fact the Christian world has already experienced nearly two rather than one millennium of increasing its numbers. It would be a stretch to say that the majority of the world's inhabitants have been Christian of course, yet at some point in the future that could be so. I hate to say this-yet in addition to conversion there is a real possibility that some global disaster could occur leaving the majority in a Christian society as survivors and hence a planetary majority. At any moment the fulfillment of Gentry's majority criterion is only a heartbeat away.
I believe that a planetary social catastrophe will not be the way that a Christian majority develops though. Simply with the continuity of Christianity and the decline and fall of other major religions over time the majority of human beings affiliated with a religion may arrive by default as Christian. Taoists and Zoroastrians, Manicheans and eventually Buddhists too may decline in number. Islam is presently popular in repressive and neo-authoritarian nations of the second world yet the innate violence and oppression of women in that warrior religion may transition the false prophet's popular to a downward trajectory corresponding to increasing ecospherically renewable prosperity in the second world.
It is possible that poverty will disappear, yet with mechanization and mass production along with other materials technologies sustainable development and resource continuity along with recovery of planetary biospheric health are far greater challenges that eliminating poverty that could simply be accomplished rather swiftly by expanding existing production. The trouble with rapid increase of global production is a corresponding rapid depletion of non-renewable natural resources, rapid and continuing ecosphere decay and possible demographic disaster. Plainly the need for sustainable intellectual development of managing ecospheric health and species diversity exists.
Crime may or may not disappear. Criminal activity has a certain defining element to it. Paul wrote about the law and those convicted by the law-that hasn't changed. The laws of God and the laws of men differ. Being a runaway slave was a crime in the Roman world, while today owning slaves is a crime. Slaves that were Christian were free in the Roman world in a way that their owners still in bondage to sin were not. In a majority Christian world original sin will still exist because it is implicit in human nature within the parameters of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That can't be helped until one has a non-temporal body in heaven. Notably Jesus said that people are not married nor given in marriage in heaven. Without thermodynamic evolutions and with an eternal form of being sustained by the Lord the short-lived reproductive configured human experience will be obsolete. So will crime disappear on Earth sometime during the build-up to a Christian majority?
In answer to that question it is again useful to point out the innumerable scenarios that could unfold in the future. Technology could make crime impossible. One might also consider primitive societies where there was little technological development. If someone admired another's knife that individually might just give it to him to avoid jealousy and end the envy. It was easy to make a new knife and no one had a need to accumulate a pile of extra knives. It is possible that with 3D print-on-demand production of articles that everyone can get what they need to exist reasonably well and reduce crime. The major issue with that would be running out of the resource raw materials for the printers-an issue with printers even now of the conventional sort is the cost of replacement ink cartridges. There are innumerable scenarios and an off world whereby crime could decrease radically and a Christian majority could exist, yet what of Christian rule?
Many have recognized a need for separate ecclesiastical and secular government bodies. I think that Gentry does not differ on that point. The secular government would be staffed with apposite rather than opposite religious opinion holding individuals so one might not find much practical difference. I think it is important however to note that democratic government is quite compatible with a priesthood of believers ecclesiastical structure.
A Priesthood of Believers church structure with perhaps ranks of beginner, intermediate and elder sharing liturgical and other church roles, sharing job credit banks, sharing health banks and with national and planetary recognition of church participation regardless of where they attended last week would bring all people into a fundamental role serving under the One High Priest as missionaries sharing the good news of the Lord. Work for the priesthood of believers would become a Christian service for others-and this is a quite natural evolution too in the modern age of mass electronic communication. Theological schools can produce customized service content for Sunday readers to use as discretionary helps on their smart phone. Leadership roles in small church groups can rotate weekly in order that all Christians participate. The egalitarianism of the Christian Church means that all would be professing Christians in public and take the Bible and its moral precepts seriously as a profession of faith. That will offset some of the institutional damage inflicted by corrupted hierarchical organization structures to the public now and then.
Prof. Engelsma makes what I believe is a straw man argument toward the end of his introduction; quote “Postmillennialism tells the Reformed saints that apostasy, Antichrist, and persecution are past. It calls them to take power in the world. It assures them of future earthly ease. It leaves the people unprepared for the struggle that lies ahead for the church, the fiercest struggle that the church has ever faced. It renders the people oblivious to the gathering storm at this very moment. The abounding lawlessness in Western society, for example, does not for the postmillennialist herald the “lawless one,” the “man of sin,” of II Thessalonians 2. It is merely the prelude to the collapse of ungodly society so that the saints can take control.-end quote
While it is true that the Revelation in the post-millennial viewpoint generally referred to first century events that are past (preterism), that does not mean that apostasy will never occur in the time after that; history has provided numerous cases of apostates already (i.e. Julian the Apostate) occurred in the past imply that no future persecution happened or will continue to happen. Like sweet and sour sauce there is persecution even while people are saved and a majority arises. Though there are persecutions of Chinese Christians today as there has in the past even so a Christian majority may grow in that nation that has just made a market correct of margin trading (taking out loans to buy stock). Though German Christians were persecuted during the Second World War if they did not support Hitler's state church 30% of German pastors choose not to stay in the expropriated-by-NAZI-criteria German church. While the Presbyterian U.S.A. church has officially made homosexual marriage acceptable doctrine and is thus apostate, some Christians stranded in that church look for other ways to renormalize to a correct doctrine.
In the Presbyterian U.S.A. church a corrupt hierarchical leadership of theologians and those with Divinity degrees as well as session sycophants can make it very difficult for a church to quit the denomination and affiliate with a God-fearing denomination. A minority may expropriate power and rule over a majority. History discovered that principle in the Bolshevik takeover in Russia, yet their was a better example in the takeover of the Inca civilization by Pizarro with approximately. twenty conquistadors as well as in Cortes' conquering of the Aztec world. Small, powerful minorities can make of the world a terrible place for the majority.
Autocrats and kings, dictators and emperors, proletariat elites and oligarchs may be many or even just a minority of one able to repress and corrupt all of a civilization. Thomas Watson pointed out that Satan was the first apostate. Hierarchical social structures bear an implicit risk of promoting tyranny. Hitler with a minority of homosexual Storm Troopers and some socialist power conquered the German political scene though perhaps with tacit approval by the dispossessed aristocracy. Prof. Engelsma seems not to consider history deeply enough in forming straw man objections to post-millennialism.
Prof. Engelsma writes in 'Reformed Amillenialism- Apostasy and Persecution' that;
quote- “The ungodly always dominate. The world’s rulers always condemn the cause of the true church. The wicked always oppress the saints. The only hope of the church in the world, and their full deliverance, is the second coming of Christ and the final judgment.
This is Reformed doctrine.”-end quote
Dr. Engelsma is a characteristic pessimist that pre-mil and select amills carry like a thorn in the flesh. Pre-mill and select post-mill approaches require an all or nothing/either-or choice of a strange amillennial fatalism without a kingdom of God existing until the second coming or an absent from Earth Lord-or a 'golden age' perhaps with Jews ruling all of the nations where thorns too might have child-safe rounded edges.
The only hope that any human being has is of course eternal life with the Lord, and no one will get that immediately in a physical form before they physically die unless they happen to be living when the second coming occurs. For everything else that human beings may wish for life generally has gotten better and so far it hasn't been required that Christians be apostate to have the good life. There are Christians I suppose that are challenged by prosperity to follow Christians ethics better, yet even so, the quality of life today is better for more than at any time in history. The average life span of people on Earth is older than at any time than the ante-diluvian generation. Even in 1776 the average lifespan of a Frenchman or American was fewer than 26 years. At Gettysburg 90% of the soldiers killed had experienced tooth abscess without modern dentistry. Life before modern medical technology was painful-death in war was perhaps a better choice than dying of cancer without treatment. One can understand the ideal of Achilles or of the Vikings a little better in that light. Though mortal man cannot live forever it is possible that with Christian ethics and the inspiration of the Spirit of God a long, slow trudge to better the lot of mankind can arise-and when the time is ripe the Lord will return to conclude a progress that can go no farther with Jesus personally present in the flesh.
Again-Engelsma's pessimism and either/or point of view; quote-”This view of the future is in harmony with the testimony of the Scriptures everywhere that persecution will be the lot of the believers always. “Blessed are ye,” said Christ, “when men shall revile you, and persecute you … for my sake” (Matt. 5:11). “In the world ye shall have tribulation,” He said to the church at His leaving (John 16:33). In every age, God’s elect confess, “For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter” (Rom. 8:36). In II Timothy 3, the apostle expressly describes the “last days,” that is, the present age between Christ’s ascension and His return, as the time in which “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (v.12).”-end quote
Christians may suffer persecution in the office being chided for seeming not to approve of purple hair and eyeshadow of the mail guy or for not sleeping around with Sally and Sue when they might have last weekend. Christians may be persecuted for writing a prose poem for Christ with reproof from the government in just not being hired to a government job. It is not necessary for Christians to be burnt at the stake to be persecuted nor machine gunned in Tienanmen Square though the spectacular may occur. Prof. Engelsma and millions of other Christians have probably not been tortured to choose to worship the state gods or God yet that does not mean that they are not Christian even so.
Professor Engelsma's scriptural citations just don't hold water in determining what sort of social conditions must exist; that there is no possibility of a gradually improvement in the human condition-one led incidentally by many Christians in fields from Mendel and genetics to Newton and gravity or Copernicus (a priest too) and heliocentric theory seems manifestly mistaken. It is possible to miss out on small incremental betterments in the human condition including millions of Christians when spectacular sacrifices by star Christians like Polycarp arise in our memory. Even so Christians are in a temporal struggle against sin and the implicit original sin of the second law of thermodynamics with the energy drives for more input and procreation.
Christians actualizing teleology in their social context need not transpire within Marxist or Hegelian dialectical sets. In fact if one were to regard eschatology as a set theory metric occurring over time it is possible that subtlety in schematics could be the rule rather than the exception. Instead of just one member of the set of temporal actualization along the time-line from point A to point B their may6 be many members of the set comprising social status as Christians, non-Christians, anti-Christians, other religions and so forth. Engelsma's idea of a golden age with no coefficient of adversity seems prima facie superfluous. Historians may judge various historical periods as a golden age well aware that significant human suffering occurred within that very society at the same time. Though the term golden age isn't used in scripture (what is wrong with an 'emerald age' or a silicon age'?), in comparison to select eras of world history it could well be fair to say that a time such as that for Christians in the United States presently with persecution generally hidden and subtle or financial and unitive when it occurs with a basic persecution reduced parameter. That is certainly a golden age in comparison to Neronic persecutions.
On page 533 of 'He Shall Have Dominion' Kenneth Gentry writes that; quote”
Suffering is an instrument of God for the humbling and purification of His people for the long run. This is why the predominate theme involved in suffering is patient perseverance.”-end quote
Gentry quotes Paul; “"You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions,
sufferings - what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them" (2 Tim. 3:10-11).
"Therefore, among God's churches we boast about your
perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are
enduring" (2 Thess. 1:4).”-end quote
The following quotes from pages 534-535 of 'He Shall Have Dominion' summarize Gentry's view of suffering and persecution for Christians in the post-millennial paradigm..
Gentry starts with scriptural references from John, and James before continuing to explain his viewpoint. Quote-
"You know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance" (Jms.l:3).
"Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering,
take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord" (Jms.5:10).
"I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and
kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus" (Rev.
1:9).
"If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity he will go. If
anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword he will be
killed. This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the
part of the saints" (Rev. 13: 10).
Christianity is an historical faith designed for the long run. The faithful are to be diligently laboring now amidst trials and tribulations with an eye to the future. It is the tendency of sinful man to seek short-cuts to attaining his goals, but the Christian is to labor against difficult circumstances with the expectation of the gradualistic development of God's kingdom good in history. We as Christians are to learn this through our trials and tribulations, through our affliction and suffering.-end quote
quote-The Progressive Reduction of Suffering of in History
Because suffering is designed to teach humble patience before God it becomes a strategic means for the training of God's people. It is not an historical end for them. Suffering is a characteristic of the Church in evil times; it is not the definition of the Church for all times. It is an instrument to a greater goal: the ultimate blessing of godly man. Suffering is not a goal; it is a means.”-end quote
quote“The New Testament Message
In Matthew 5:5, the Lord promises: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Meek endurance for the long run goes against the sinful grain of man. Consequently, enduring suffering breaks the weak, but steels the faithful for greater glory. Thus, in the long run and after much suffering, the meek will inherit the earth, as the Bible teaches and postmillennialism expects. Suffering is a means of long-term dominion.
Christ comforts His disciples for the long run: "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" Oohn 16:3). The Suffering Christ came forth from the grave as the Victorious Christ. As it is in the school of life, glory
follows suffering. Of Christ, our perfect example, we read: "Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" (Luke 24:26). "He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow" (1 Pet. 1: 11b). Christ no
longer suffered on earth after the resurrection. His exaltation glory began with His bodily resurrection, in time and on earth.
This is the divine pattern for His Church, as well. Paul speaks of his own patient endurance of persecutional suffering in a context that expects earthly victory. He presents it as an example for Timothy”-end quote
Engelsma's Article 1 on Mathew 24 cites-quote;” It quoted the powerful statement in chapter 11 of the Second Helvetic Confession (1566):
And from heaven the same Christ will return in judgment, when wickedness will then be at its greatest in the world and when the Antichrist, having corrupted true religion, will fill up all things with superstition and impiety and will cruelly lay waste the Church with bloodshed and flames (Dan., ch. 11).”-end quote
I am not sure, yet I believe that Gentry and post-mills would say that the scriptural reference in Daniel points to the tribulations of the first century, and that the Lord did return in judgment in the first century.
I will take the opportunity here to make a comment on the Reformed Church doctrine such as the Helvetic Confession. They assuredly are important guides to reformed faith yet served a particular role in their day within a given historical circumstance in relation to alternate doctrines such as were presented by the Roman Catholic Church and others. Just because the doctrines are venerable and were state of the art theologically in their time, it does not follow that they were infallible. On the contrary it is possible that some elements of eschatological interpretation of scripture could have been wrong (though without damage resulting to soteriological concerns) by some of the authors. Dr. Engelsma seems to regard the ancient reformed confessions somewhat akin to scripture canonically speaking. Yet it may be useful to regard the doctrines as in a position somewhat akin to that of Isaac Newton in relation to gravitational theory in that they could stand some modern insight for upgrading and even correction to fit within General Relativity's parameters better. If there were pre-millennial interpretations of scripture that affected the understanding of the reformers, or better preponderantly pre-trib interpretive beliefs dominating the ideas of the reformers that does not obviate the value of continuing to reform and revise the Christian comprehension of scripture in order that it may be a prevalence of orthodox interpretation (straight speaking) today. Instead of Chairman Mao's perennial revolution theologians may require perennial reform to become better settled in doctrine. It may well be that the wisdom of man is so far deficient from anything approaching exhaustive and accurate knowledge of what the Lord has revealed in scripture as it is that perpetual reform is requisite for breaking free from the wretched ossification of dogmatism endemic to ecclesiastical formalism.
Prof Engelsma wrote in the first of his series of articles on Matthew 24-
quote-”The happy predictions of postmillennialism for the church in the world are overthrown by 2,000 years of history.
Postmillennialism’s denial of apostasy, antichrist, and persecution is refuted by historical events.
Amillennialism, on the other hand, rings true to history, past and present. To refer only to this one vital element in the controversy, the true church has always been and is today the remnant according to the election of grace. When and where has the true church ever been the majority? It was the remnant in apostolic times; it was the remnant at the time of the Reformation; it is the remnant today. Why, even in Israel/Judah, it was the remnant.”-end quote
I have earlier addressed Dr. Engelsma's pessimistic view of history and situation of world Christians today. With perhaps as many as a billion people at least claiming nominally to be Christians the church today may reasonably be said to be somewhat more than a remnant. Christians today may have advantages that Christians in 2nd and third world nations don't, and the majority of those people are not Christian, to modern medical technology. It would seem somewhat wimpish to claim that pain relief is worse or that modern medical treatment for Christians today hasn't improved much since the first century. Some Christians at work today are at risk of paper cuts or carpal tunnel and not much else, yet of course there are persecuted Christians such as those living in China that will need to wait perhaps until the Chinese government leadership is saved through the grace of the Lord, for relief. Yet the basic problem with Prof. Engelsma's analysis is that using secular history as an hermeneutic tool for interpreting scripture isn't scriptural-that it it is an inversion of proper method.
Point-Counter Point
I will conclude this point-counter-point presentation of why so many pre-tribulationists and amilleniallists are plain wrong with a substantive excerpt (found in pages 316-324 of Kenneth Gentry's 'He Shall Have Dominion' on the 70 weeks the prophet wrote of in the eponymous book of Daniel. This is a very important topic to dispensationalist and most all pre-trib evangelicals as well as select amilleniallists. I have removed the copious footnotes and bibliographical references as well as greek spellings that I cannot print in my word processor)..
Quote-“Seventy represents ten seven-week periods: ten jubilees.
The seventy sevens (weeks) appear to point to a complete redemptive Jubilee. This appropriately points to Christ, who brings in that ultimate Jubilee (cf. Luke 4:17-21; Isa. 61:1-3;
Matt. 24:31), and who is the leading character in Daniel's prophecy. Consequently, the time frame revealed to Daniel demarcates the period in which "the Messianic redemption was to be
accomplished. "
Chronological Value
(continuing quote from 'He Shall Have Dominion')
The seventy weeks represent a period of seventy times seven years, or 490 years: (1) In the preceding context, the original seventy years of Jeremiah's prophecy is in Daniel's mind (Dan. 9:2). (2) The sabbath year (the seventh year of the sabbath period) is frequently referred to simply as "the sabbath."g (3) There is Scriptural warrant for measuring days in terms of years in some passages (Gen. 29:27-28; Num. 14:34; Ezek. 4:6). The "command" spoken of in Daniel 9:25 is "Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem...." At first appearance it would seem to be Cyrus' decree to rebuild the Temple in 538 B.C. This command is mentioned in 2 Chronicles 36:22-23 and in Ezra 1: 1-4; 5: 13, 17, 6:3. Daniel, however, specifically speaks of the command to "restore and build Jerusalem," which is an important qualification.
Though half-hearted efforts were made to rebuild Jerusalem after Cyrus' decree, for a long time Jerusalem was little more than a sparsely populated, unwalled village. Daniel speaks of
the command to "restore" (shub, return) Jerusalem (Dan. 9:25). This requires that it be returned to its original integrity and grandeur "as at the first" Ger. 33:7). It was not until the middle of the fifth century B.C. that this was undertaken seriously. The first period of seven weeks must indicate something, for it is set off from the two other periods. Were it not significant, Daniel could have spoken of the sixty-nine weeks, rather than the "seven weeks and sixty-two weeks" (Dan. 9:25). This seven weeks (or forty-nine years) apparently witnesses the successful conclusion of the rebuilding of Jerusalem.
The second period of sixty-two weeks, extends from the conclusion of the rebuilding of Jerusalem to the introduction of the Messiah to Israel at His baptism at the beginning of His public ministry (Dan. 9:25), sometime around A.D. 26. This interpretation is quite widely agreed upon by conservative
scholars, being virtually "universal among Christian exegetes,,13 - excluding dispensationalists. The third period of one week is the subject of intense controversy between dispensationalism and other conservative scholarship. I will turn to this shortly.
Interpretation of Daniel 9:24
In Daniel 9:24, the overriding, glorious expectation of the prophecy is stated: "Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, tobring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy."
The six infinitival phrases of verse 24 should be understood as three couplets (Payne, Terry, Maurer, Hitzig, and the Massoretes), rather than as two triplets (Keil and Young).14 Clearly, these six results are the main point of the prophecy, serving as the heading to the explication to follow. The "know thereforeand understand" statement in verse 25 begins that explication.
The general view of Daniel 9:24 among non-dispensational evangelicals is that "the six items presented ... settle the terminus ad quem of the prophecy,"15 that is, they have to do with
the First Advent. Dispensationalists, however, hold that these events are "not to be found in any event near the earthly lifetime of our Lord.,,16 Rather they teach that "God will once again turn His attention in a special way to His people the Jews and to His holy city Jerusalem, as outlined in Daniel 9:24."
The dispensationalist takes a decidedly futurist approach to the prophecy, when he gets past the first sixty-nine weeks. Let us notice, first, that the Seventy Weeks will witness the finishing of the transgression. As just noted, Daniel's prayer of confession was regarding Israel's sins (Dan. 9:4ff) and the prophecy's focus is on Israel (Dan. 9:24a). Consequently, this finishing (kala) the transgression has to do with Israel's finishing, i.e., completing, her transgression against God. The finishing of that
transgression occurs in the ministry of Christ, when Israel culminates her resistance to God by rejecting His Son and...
The second part of the couplet is directly related to the first: Having finished the transgression against God in the rejection of the Messiah, now the sins are sealed up. The idea here is, as Payne observes, to seal or to "reserve sins for punishment."19 Because of Israel's rejection of Messiah, God reserves punishment for her: the final, conclusive destruction of the temple, which was reserved from the time of Jesus' ministry until A.D. 70 (Matt. 24:2, 34). The sealing or reserving of the sins indicates that within the "Seventy Weeks" Israel will complete her transgression, and with the completing
of her sin, by crucifying Christ, God will act to reserve (beyond the seventy weeks) her sins for judgment.
The third result (beginning the second couplet) has to do with the provision of "reconciliation for iniquity."20 The Hebrew word kaphar is the word for "atonement," i.e., a covering of sin.
It clearly speaks of Christ's atoning death, which is the ultimate atonement to which all temple rituals looked (Heb. 9:26 21 ).This also occurred during His earthly ministry - at His death.
The dispensationalist here prefers to interpret this result as application rather than effecting. He sees it as subjective appropriation instead of objective accomplishment: "[T]he actualapplication of it is again associated with the second advent as far as Israel is concerned.,,22 But on the basis of the Hebrew verb, the passage clearly speaks of the actual making reconciliation (or atonement).
18. Matt. 20:18-19; 23:37-38; 27:11-25; Mark 10:33; 15:1; Luke 18:32; 23:1-2;
John 18:28-31; 19:12, 15; Acts 2:22-23; 3:13-15a; 4:26-27; 5:30: 7:52.
19. Payne, "Goal of Daniel's Seventy Weeks," p. 111.
Because of this atonement to cover sin, the fourth result is that everlasting righteousness is effected. That is, the final, complete atonement establishes righteousness. This speaks of the objective accomplishment, not the subjective appropriation of righteousness. This was effected by Christ within the seventy-week period, as well (Rom. 3:21-22a).
The fifth result (the first portion of the third couplet) has to do with the ministry of Christ on earth, which is introduced at His baptism: He comes "to seal up vision and prophecy." By this is
meant that Christ fulfills (and thereby confirms) the prophecy (Luke 18:31; cr. Luke 24:44; Acts 3:18).23
Finally, the seventy years are for the following goal: "to anoint the Most Holy." This anointing [mashach] speaks of the Christ's baptismal anointing for the following reasons: (1) The
overriding concern of Daniel 9:24-27 is Messianic. The temple that is built after the Babylonian Captivity is to be destroyed after the seventy weeks (v. 27), with no further mention made
of it. (2) In the following verses, the Messiah (mashiyach,"Christ," "Anointed One") is specifically named twice (vv. 25, 26). (3) The "most holy" phraseology speaks of the Messiah, who is "that Holy One who is to be born."24 It is of Christ that the ultimate redemptive Jubilee is prophesied by Isaiah (Isa. 61:1-2a; cf. Luke 4:17-21). It was at His baptismal anointing that the Spirit came upon Him (Mark 1:9-11). This was introductory to His ministry, of which we read three verses later:
'Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of 23. Walvoord slips by allowing this prophecy to cover "the cessation of the New Testament prophetic gift seen both in oral prophecy and in the writing of the Scriptures." Walvoord, Daniel, p. 222. This, however, does not occur in either the first sixty-nine weeks (up to "just before the time of Christ's crucifixion") or in the seventieth week (the future Great Tribulation), the periods which he claims involve the 490 years. Walvoord, Prophecy Knowledge Handbook, p. 258. Yet he specifically says that the "six major events characterize the 490 years"! Ibid., p. 251.24. Luke 1:35; cf. 4:34, 41. See also: Mark 1:24; Acts 3:14; 4:27, 30; 1 John 2:20;Rev. 3:7; He is called the "anointed one" (Psa. 2:2; Isa. 42:1; Acts 10:38).
God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled [the Sixty-ninth week?25],and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1: 14-15). Christ is pre-eminently the Anointed One. 26
The Seventieth Week
The Messiah now experiences something "after the sixty-two weeks" (Dan. 9:26), which follow the preceding "seven weeks" (v. 25). This is to occur, then, sometime after the sixty-ninth week. A natural reading of the text shows this is in the seventieth week, for that is the only time frame remaining for the accomplishment of the goal of the prophecy listed in verse 24.
That which occurs at this time is: "Messiah shall be cut off." The Hebrew word translated "cut off" here (karath) "is used of the death penalty, Lev. 7:20; and refers to a violent death,"27 i.e,
the death of Christ on the cross.
Given the Hebraic pattern of repetition, we may easily discern a parallel between verses 26 and 27; verse 27 gives an 25. Interestingly, there was a current and widely held belief that a ruler from
within Israel was to arise "at that very time," i.e., during the Jewish War. Tacitus,
Histories 5:13: "The majority were convinced that the ancient scriptures of their priests alluded to the present as the very time when the Orient would triumph and from Judaea would go forth men destined to rule the world. This mysterious prophecy really referred to Vespasian and Titus. . . ." Suetonius, Vespasian 4: "An ancient superstition was current in the East, that out of Judaea at this time would come the rulers of the world. This prediction, as the event later proved, referred to a Roman Emperor...." Josephus even picks up on this idea, when he ingratiates himself to Vespasian by declaring he was the one to rule (Wars 3:8:9). The only prophecy regarding Israel that actually dates Messianic era events is Daniel 9:24-27. Josephus also applies the Daniel 9 passage to the rule of the Romans in another context: "In the very same manner Daniel also wrote concerning the Roman government, and that our country should be made desolate by them. All these things did this man
leave in writing, as God had shewed them to him...." (Ant. 10:11:7).26. Psa. 2:2; 132:10; Isa. 11:2; 42:1; Hab. 3:13; Acts 4:27; 10:38; Heb. 1:9.Vanderwaal denies the Messianic referent of this passage, preferring a Maccabeanpriestly referent. Cornelius Vanderwaal, Hal Lindsey and Biblical Prophecy (St. Catherines, Ontario: Paideia, 1978), p. 37. 27. Young, Daniel, p. 206. expansion of verse 26. Negatively, Messiah's cutting off in verse 26 is the result of Israel's completing her transgression and bringing it to a culmination (v. 24) by crucifying the Messiah.
Positively, verse 27 states this same event: "He shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; but in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering." Considered from its positive effect, this confirming of the covenant with many makes reconciliation and brings in everlasting righteousness (v. 24). The confirming of a covenant (v. 27) refers to the prophesied covenantal actions of verse 24, which come about as the result of the Perfect Covenantal Jubilee (Seventy Weeks) and are mentioned as a result of Daniel's covenantal prayer (cr. v. 4). The covenant mentioned, then, is the divine covenant of God's redemptive grace. 29 Messiah came to confirm the covenantal promises (Luke 1:72; Eph. 2:12). He confirmed the covenant by His death on the cross (Heb. 7:22b).30 The word translated "confirm" (higbir) is related to the angel
Gabriel's name, who brought Daniel the revelation of the Seventy Weeks (and who later brings the revelation of Christ's birth [Luke 1:19,26]). "Gabriel" is based on the Hebrew gibbor, "strong one," a concept frequently associated with the covenant God. 31 The related word found in Daniel 9:27 means to "make trong, confirm.,,32 This "firm covenant" brings about "everlasting righteousness" (Dan. 9:24) - hence its firmness.
Daniel's prayer was particularly for Israel (Dan. 9:3ff), and it as uttered in recognition of God's promises of mercy upon hose who love Him (v. 4). Therefore, the prophecy holds that he covenant will be confirmed with many for one week. The reference to the "many" speaks of the faithful in Israel. "Thus a contrast is introduced between He and the Many, a contrast which appears to reflect upon the great Messianic passage, Isaiah 52:13-53:12 and particularly 53:11. Although the entire
nation will not receive salvation, the many will receive."
This confirmation of God's covenant promises to the "many" of Israel will occur in the middle of the seventieth week (v. 27), which parallels "after the sixty-two [and seven] weeks" (v. 26), while providing more detail. We know Christ's three-and-one half-year ministry was decidedly focused on the Jews in the first half of the seventieth week (Matt. 10:5b; cf. Matt. 15:24). For a period of three and one-half years after the crucifixion,34 the apostles focused almost exclusively on the Jews, beginning first "in Judea" (Acts 1:8; 2:14) because "the gospel of Christ" is "forthe Jew first" (Rom. 1:16; cr. 2:10; John 4:22). Although the event that serves as the terminus of the sixty-ninth week is clearly specified, such is not the case with the terminus of the seventieth. Thus, the exact event that ends the seventieth is not so significant for us to know. Apparently at the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr of Christianity, the covenantal proclamation began to be turned toward the Gentiles (Acts 8:1). The apostle to the Gentiles appears on the scene at Stephen's death (Acts 7:58-8:1), as the Jewish persecution against Christianity breaks out. Paul's mission is clearly stated as exceeding the narrow Jewish focus (Acts 9:15).
This confirmation of the covenant occurs "in the middle of the week" (v. 27). I have already shown that the seventieth week begins with the baptismal anointing of Christ. Then, after three and one-half years of ministry - the middle of the seven-tieth week - Christ was crucified (Luke 13:6-9; Eccl. Hist.
1:10:3). Thus, the prophecy states that by His conclusive confirmation of the covenant, Messiah will "bring an end to sacrifice and offering" (v. 27) by offering up Himself as a sacrifice for sin (Heb. 9:25-26; cf. Heb. 7:11-12, 18-22). Consequently, at His death the Temple's veil was torn from top to bottom (Matt. 7:51) as evidence that the sacrificial system was legally disestablished in the eyes of God (cf. Matt. 23:38), for Christ is the Lamb of God (John 1:29).
The Destruction of Jerusalem
But how are we to understand the latter portions of both verses 26 and 27? What are we to make of the destruction of the city and sanctuary (v. 26) and the abomination that causes desolation (v. 27), which most non-dispensational evangelical commentators agree occurred in A.D. 70? In verse 26, we learn there are two events to occur after the sixty-ninth week: (1) The Messiah is to be "cut off," and (2) the city and sanctuary are to be destroyed. Verse 27a informs us that the Messiah's cutting off (v. 26a) is a confirmation of the covenant and is to occur at the half-way mark of the seventieth
week. So, the Messiah's death is clearly within the time frame of the Seventy Weeks (as we expect because of His being the major figure of the fulfillment of the prophecy).
The events involving the destruction of the city and the sanctuary with war and desolation (vv. 26b, 27b) are the consequences of the cutting off of the Messiah and do not necessarily occur in the seventy weeks time frame. They are an addendum to the fulfillment of the focus of the prophecy, which is stated in verse 24. The destructive acts are anticipated, however, in the divine act of sealing up or reserving the sin of Israel for punishment. Israel's climactic sin - their completing of their transgression (v. 24) with the cutting off of Messiah (v. 26a) – results in God's act of reseroing Israel's sin until later. Israel's judgment will not be postponed forever; it will come after the expiration of the seventy weeks. This explains the "very indefinite" phrase "till the end of the war": the "end" will not occur during the seventy weeks. That prophesied end occurred in A.D. 70, exactly
as Christ had made abundantly clear in Matthew 24:15.
The Dispensational Interpretation
The Gap in the Seventy Weeks
Dispensationalism incorporates a gap or parenthesis between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks. This gap spans the entirety of the Church Age from the Triumphal Entry to the Rapture. 36 The dispensational arguments for a gap of undetermined length between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks are not convincing. Let us consider a few of their leading arguments for a gap.
First, the peculiar phraseology in Daniel: Daniel places the cutting off of the Messiah "after the 62 'sevens,' not in the 70th 'seven.' "37 This is so stated to allow for a gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth-weeks. If the cutting off did not occur during the sixty-ninth week or during the seventieth
week, there must be a gap in between wherein it does occur.
In response, it is obvious that seventy occurs after sixty-nine, and thus fits the requirements of the prophecy. Consequently, such an argument does not prove that the "after" requires a gap.
Besides, Daniel mentions only seventy weeks and, as LaRondelle has pointed out, Daniel most certainly does not say "after sixty-nine weeks, but not in the seventieth. Such an explanation is a gratuitous assumption. Since Daniel has yet to deal with the seventieth week, and he has clearly dealt with the preceding sixty-nine weeks (v. 25), it is quite natural to assume this cutting off of the essiah must be sometime within the seven-year period covered by the seventieth week.
Second, a fatal admission: "Historically the destruction of Jerusalem occurred in A.D. 70 almost forty years after the death of Christ.,,39 Since this was given in Daniel's prophecy and was to occur within the seventy weeks, "the continuousfulfillment theory [is] left without any explanation adequate for
interposing an event as occurring after the sixty-ninth seven by some thirty-eight years.
I have already explained the relation of the seventy weeks to the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 (see above). The goal of the Seventy Weeks is not the A.D. 70 destruction of the Temple, which is not mentioned in verse 24. That destruction is a later consequence of certain events brought to fulfillment within the seventy weeks. The actual act of God's reserving judgment (v. 24) occurred within the seventy weeks; the later removal of that reservation did not. There is no necessity at all for a gap.
Third, the general tendency in prophecy: Walvoord writes:
"Nothing should be plainer to one reading the Old Testament than that the foreview therein provided did not describe the period of time between the two advents. This very fact confused
even the prophets (cf. 1 Pet. 1:10-12)."41 His argument then is this: Old Testament prophecy can merge the First and Second Advents into one scene, though separated by thousands of years. Consequently, we have biblical warrant for understanding the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks as merged into one scene, although separated by a gap of thousands of years.
This argument is wholly without merit. It must be noted that the Seventy Weeks are considered as a unit, though sub-divided into three unequal parts: (1) It is one period of seventy weeks
that must transpire in order to experience the events mentioned. The plural "seventy weeks" is followed by a singular verb "is decreed," which indicates the unity of the time period.
(2) An overriding concern of the prophecy, in distinction to all other Messianic prophecies, is that it is designed as a measuring time frame. If the dispensational gap theory regarding the seventieth week is true, then the gap separating the seventieth from the sixty-ninth week is almost 2000 years long, or four times the whole time period of the seventy weeks or 490 years!
The concept of measuring is thus destroyed.
The Dispensational Covenant
The confirmation of the covenant mentioned in verse 27 is woefully misunderstood by dispensationalists. According to Walvoord: "[T]his refers to the coming world ruler at the beginning of the last seven years who is able to gain control over ten countries in the Middle East. He will make a covenant withIsrael for a seven-year period. As Daniel 9:27 indicates, in the middle of the seven years he will break the covenant, stop the sacrifices being offered in the temple rebuilt in that period, and become their persecutor instead of their protector, fulfilling the promises of Israel's day of trouble Jer. 30:5-7)."
Several problems plague this interpretation, some of which have already been indicated in another connection: (1) The covenant here is not made, it is confirmed. This is actually the confirmation of a covenant already extant, i.e., the covenant of God's redemptive grace confirmed by Christ (Rom. 15:8).
(2) As noted above, the term is related to the name of the angel of God who delivered the message to Daniel: Gabriel ("God is strong"). The lexical correspondence between the name of the strong angel of God and the making strong of the covenant is in itself suggestive of the divine nature of the covenant.In addition, covenantal passages frequently employ related terms, when speaking of the strong God of the covenant.
(3) The parallelism with verse 26 indicates that the death of the Messiah is directly related to the confirming of the covenant. He is "cut off" but "not for himself" (v. 26a), for He "confirms the covenant" for the "many" of Israel (v. 27a). His "cutting off" brings the onfirmation of the covenant, for "without shedding of blood there is no remission" (Reb. 9:22).
(4) The indefinite pronoun "he" does not refer back to "the prince who is to come" of verse 26. 44 That "prince" is a subordinate noun; "the people" is the dominant noun. Thus, the "he" refers back to the last dominant individual mentioned: "Messiah" (v. 26a). The Messiah is the leading figure in the whole prophecy, so the destruction of the Temple is related to His death. In fact, the people who destroy the Temple are providentially "His
armies" (Matt. 22:2-7).
The Last Days
An eschatological theme that is as widely misunderstood as it is commonly discussed in popular prophetic literature is that of the "last days." In a popular work, the writer comments
about those of us living among the "generation"
(Matt. 24:34)43. Deut. 7:9, 21; 10:17; Neh. 1:5; 9:32; Isa. 9:6; Dan. 9:4. See earlier discussion
above.
of World War I: "There is no question that we are living in the last days.... The fact that we are the generation that will be on the earth when our Lord comes certainly should not depress US." This factor of eschatological chronology is an important concept that requires a deep appreciation of the complexity ofGod's sovereign governance of history and the outworking of His redemptive purposes.
Properly understood, the idea of the last days is focused on the most important episode of history: the life of Jesus Christ lived out in fulfillment of divine prophecy and of redemptive history. Christ is the focal point of all Scripture. He is anticipated in the Old Testament revelation and realized in the New: "You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me" John 5:39). As such, He stands as history's dividing line - hence the historical
appropriateness and theological significance of dividing history between B.C. and A.D.
There are many prophetic references looking forward to the "Messianic age of consummation" introduced by Christ. This era is frequently deemed "the last days" or "the latter days." "The expression then properly denoted the future times in general; but, as the coming of the Messiah was to the eye of a Jew the most important event in the coming ages, the great, glorious, and crowning scene in all that vast futurity, the phrase came to be regarded as properly expressive of that.... It was a phrase in contrast with the days of the patriarchs, the kings, the prophets, etc. The last days, or the closing period of the world, were the days of the Messiah."so His corning was "nothing less
than the beginning of the great eschaton of history.'
It is when Christ came that "the fullness of times" was realized: "(Greek-removed GCG) Gal. iv. 4, implies an orderly unrolling of the preceding stages of world-history towards a fixed end.,,52 Hence, the preparatory preaching at thebeginning of His ministry: "[T]he time is fulfilled, the kingdom
of God is at hand" (Mark 1: 15; Matt. 4: 17). Prior to this, the Old Testament era was typological and anticipatory. The Old Testament era served as the "former days" (Mal. 3:4)53 that gave way to the "last days," the times initiated by Christ's coming: "God, who at various times and in different ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things" (Heb. 1:1-2).
Thus, we find frequent references to the presence of the last days during the New Testament time. The last days are initiated by the appearance of the Son (Heb. 1:2; 1 Pet. 1:20) to effect redemption (Heb. 9:26) and by His pouring out of the Spirit (Acts 2:16,17,24; cf. Isa. 32:15; Zech. 12:10). The "ends of the ages" came during the apostolic era (1 Cor. 10:11). These will run until "the last day," when the resurrection;judgment occurs to end history John 6:39; 11 :24; 12:48). But before the final
end point is reached, perilous times will punctuate the era of the end (2 Tim. 3:1) and mockers will arise (2 Pet. 3:3).”-end quote
