segunda-feira, 30 de julho de 2012

COVENANT AND REDEMPTION


By Kenneth L. Gentry
Covenant and redemption
We may trace Scripture’s unity through the unity of the covenants, which set forth the overarching Covenant of Grace. The heart of God’s “covenants of the promise” (diathekon tes epaggelias, Eph 2:12) is: “I will be your God and you will be My people.” This idea occurs many times in Scripture. God establishes his redemptive covenants in order to secure a favorable relationship between him and his people. By means of the covenant, God’s people are intimately related to the Lord of heaven and earth. “The covenant of redemption and grace that governs the Bible begins with Abraham, and it is here that the main image patterns of the covenant become firmly established.”
Covenantal development is onion-like, layer upon layer: “Each successive covenant supplements its predecessors.” We may easily see this in comparing the structural and thematic continuity between the covenants. For instance, when preparing to establish the Mosaic covenant “God remembered his covenant with Abraham” (Ex 2:24). Those living under the Davidic Covenant often refer to the Mosaic Covenant frequently, as well as to the Abrahamic. And, of course, the new covenant relationship to earlier covenants appears in the very formula of the new covenant: “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah” (Jer 31:31).
Interestingly, Ezekiel combines the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants in the chapters in which he deals with the new covenant:
And David my servant shall be king over them [Davidic]; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them [Mosaic]. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt [Abrahamic]; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children’s children for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for ever [Davidic]. Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them [New]: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. (Eze 37:24–26)
Willem Van Gemeren notes that “the promises of these covenants were renewed and enlarged throughout the history of redemption, even when the external conditions of the covenant relationship changed. McComiskey concludes, ‘The elements guaranteed by the promise covenant undergo amplification and enrichment in their expression in the major administrative covenants.’”
In the new covenant era itself we discover continuity with the preceding covenants. Romans 16:20 harkens back to the Adamic Covenant. Second Peter 3:5–7 draws a parallel with the Noahic Covenant. Romans 4:16 founds the new covenant on the Abrahamic. Romans 15:12 harkens back to the Davidic covenant. As mentioned above, Paul sums up the various Old Testament covenants as being “the covenants [plural] of the promise [singular]” (Eph 2:12). Both a basic unity as well as a pro-gressive development undergirds God’s covenants. From his Reformed premillennial perspective, Chung approvingly cites Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce a Demarest: “It is important to appreciate that Reformed covenant theology has definite merits in promoting ‘the unity of the covenant of grace, being essentially the same from Genesis 3:15 through Revelation 22:21.’ It also has strengths in affirming ‘a unity of soteriological purpose. Both Testaments set forth identical promises, the same spiritual life, and the same means of salvation, namely, faith in God’s promises.’” Thus, when the new covenant comes in Christ’s ministry, we reach “the fullness of time” (Gal 4:4; cp. Mk 1:15). And these covenants concern redemption — a redemption, as we shall see, that shall overwhelm the world.
The major competitor to covenantal theology among evangelicals today is dispensationalism. Dispensationalism allows the historic, biblical covenants to play a large role in its theology. Yet dispensational theology and covenantal theology are, in the final analysis, “irreconcilable.” Indeed, “reformed covenant doctrine cannot be harmonized with premillenarianism” because the dispensationalist’s “dispensations are not stages in the revelation of the covenant of grace, but are distinguishingly different administrations of God in directing the affairs of the world.” Thus, the major difference between covenantal theology and dispensational theology is that covenantal theology traces a relentless forward moving, unified, and developmental redemptive progress, generally understood in Reformed theology as the Covenant of Grace. Dispensational theology, however, maintains two peoples of God serving two different historical purposes. It also moves forward rather fitfully, backing up in the final dispensation to a Jewish era exalting the old covenant people, rebuilding a physical temple, and re-instituting a sacrificial cultus in the millennium.
For better or for worse the very system name “dispensationalism” tends to throw the focus on the system’s discontinuous, compartmental view of history, despite dispensationalists’ protests. This is because “a dispensation is a distinguishable economy in the outworking of God’s purpose. If one were describing a dispensation he would include other things, such as the ideas of distinctive revelation, testing, failure, and judgment.” So, as noted in the preceding paragraph, dispensations “are not stages in the revelation of the covenant of grace, but are distinguishingly different administrations of God in directing the affairs of the world.”
This necessarily fragments biblical history. In fact, as one dispensa-tionalist notes, “the more one moves in the continuity direction, the more covenantal he becomes; and the more he moves in the discon-tinuity direction, the more dispensational he becomes.” Certainly then, discontinuity in redemptive history is a major effect of dispensationalism. Even historic premillennialists fault dispensationalism’s fragmentation of redemptive history and the Bible: “One cannot emphasize strongly enough that this [dispensational] hermeneutic is utterly foreign to the early church. . . . The fundamental conviction that binds patristic interpretation together [is that] the Bible is a unified book whose theme is Jesus Christ.” I will show later that this has a major bearing on the development of God’s redemptive purpose in history and thus on Scrip-ture’s eschatology, when I compare the catastrophically introduced millennial kingdom of dispensationalism and the gradually developed kingdom of postmillennialism.
Although Scripture specifies and implies many covenants, God’s overarching redemptive purpose throws a special emphasis on a select few. These covenants include the Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and Christ’s new covenant. Unfortunately, dispensationalism suggests a secular understanding of some divine covenants, rather than a redemptive one (e.g., the Creation, Adamic, and Noahic Covenants).

domingo, 29 de julho de 2012

The ten fundamentals of statism


By Rousas John Rushdoony
1. The first duty of every state is to protect the state, not the people.
2. Other states are occasional enemies; the people are the continual enemies.
3. The purpose of taxation is confiscation, control, the redistribution of wealth, control, the support of the civil government, and control.
4. All steps to increase state power must be done in the name of The People, but the people are to be used and stripped of freedom in the process.
5. Freedom is dangerous; controls are good.
6. Freedom must be redefined; it is a right to be morally loose and irresponsible, but Christian morality is social slavery.
7. Children are the property of the state.
8. The two great sources of evil are the church and the family.
9. The only world is the world; there is no God, no heaven, nor hell.
10. Anything the state operates or does is good, in any and all spheres: education, war, peace, spending, and so on. What is "public" or statist is good; what is "private" is bad.

COVENANT AND CREATION


By Kenneth L. Gentry Jr
We must even understand the world’s creation in terms of covenant. The creation account portrays a covenantal transaction, even though it does not employ the word “covenant” (berith). I argue this on three important bases.
First, the “basic elements of a covenant are imbedded in the Genesis account,” even though the word is lacking. When God creates Adam he enters into a blessed relationship with him (Ge 1:26–27) that establishes a legal bond on the basis of specified terms (Ge 2:15–17). In that bond God promises life for obedience and death for disobedience (Ge 2:16–17; cf. 3:15–21). This forms the essence of a covenantal relation. Even Re-formed premillennialist Sung Wook Chung agrees: “I believe that Genesis 1 and 2 should be read from a covenantal perspective.”
Second, later references speak of the creation as a covenantal action. In Jeremiah we read: “Thus saith the LORD: If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season” (Jer 33:20). “Thus saith the LORD: If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth” (Jer 33:25).
As Robertson carefully points out, in Jeremiah 33:25 the Hebrew structure of the verse parallels “ordinances (huqot) of heaven and earth” with the “covenant (berith) with day and night,” pointing back to the orderly creation ordained of God. This evidently harkens back to Genesis 1:14a: “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night.”
Some might see this as referring to the Noahic Covenant mentioned in Genesis 8:22: “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” But in a passage pressing the same point elsewhere, Jeremiah employs the term “ordinance” (huqoth) to speak of the sun, moon, and stars as bearers of light (Jer 31:35), as does Genesis 1, but not Genesis 8. Even the reference to “stars” is lacking in Genesis 8, though appearing in Jeremiah 31:35.
Third, Hosea 6:7a employs “covenant” when referring to Adam’s creation. Speaking of Israel God declares: “they like Adam have transgressed the covenant.” Although the Hebrew term  dam may be translated either “Adam” (in particular) or “man” (in general), either would point back to the original covenant with Adam in Eden. Yet the particular man “Adam” seems to be in view here for several reasons. (1) The significance of Adam’s sin more forcefully exposes Israel’s rebellion. Adam’s role as the great sinner is certainly familiar to the Jews (Ge 3), for “Adam and Eve receive extensive treatment in extrabiblical Jewish . . . sources.” Job 31:33 serves as a parallel: “If I covered my transgressions as Adam, by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom.” (2) If we adopt “man” as the proper translation in Hosea 6:7, the verse would be “altogether expressionless.” How else could they have sinned than like men? (3) The reference (“they have transgressed”) is directed to Ephraim and Judah (Hos 6:4), not to the priests. Thus, the contrast is not one between priests and ordinary men, but between “Ephraim and Judah” — and the historical Adam.
Certainly the Scriptures are pre-eminently a covenant document. God even employs covenant in creating the world. And this powerful covenant concept will frame-in a postmillennial eschatology as we will see.

sábado, 28 de julho de 2012

Introducing Dr. Gentry

Ken & Melissa
Dr. & Mrs. Kenneth Gentry

Dr. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr. is a conservative, evangelical Christian minister, lecturer, and writer. He is committed to the Reformed faith as set forth in the Westminster Confession and Faith and Catechisms. He is an ordained minister in the Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly, a conservative, evangelical, Reformed denomination.

Birth, Conversion, and Family

He was born on May 3, 1950 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he was raised and where he graduated from high school and college. Though he is sometimes teased about his Southern accent, he points out that he does actually speak the King''s English. This is evident in that he is from the same state where Elvis lived.
He was converted to Christ in August, 1966 while attending a youth ministry in Baco Raton, Florida. The minister was preaching on Ephesians 2:8-9 when the Lord opened his heart to the gospel. He has been unwaveringly committed to conservative, evangelical theology ever since. He has been married to the former Melissa Gunn Pitt since July 31, 1971. They have three grown children all of whom are evangelical and Reformed Christians. He also has two small grandchildren.
Family
Dr. Gentry's Family (2010)

Education and Christian Service

Our Executive Director holds a B.A. in Bible (cum laude, 1973) from Tennessee Temple University. While attending that fundamentalist institution, his personal study led him to the doctrines of grace in Calvinism. Upon graduating there, he attended Grace Theological Seminary for two years (1973-1975) while he was still a dispensationalist. During his personal studies while a student there, he became convinced of a fuller reformed theology including a strong covenantalism which impacted his views on baptism, the church, and more.
Upon completing his theological transformation into covenantal Calvinism, he transferred to Reformed Theological Seminary in 1975. There he studied under several noted Reformed scholars, including Dr. Morton H. Smith, Dr. Simon J. Kistemaker, and Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen. While at RTS he became convinced of the postmillennial hope while studying under Bahnsen. He thereby brought his sovereign grace covenantalism to its logical conclusion. He graduated from RTS with an M.Div. degree in 1977.
After graduating from seminary Dr. Gentry pastored several Presbyterian churches, including the historic Reedy River Presbyterian Church (founded in 1887). He eventually enrolled at Whitefield Theological Seminary where he studied under Dr. Kenneth G. Talbot. There he earned a Th.M. (1985) and Th.D. (1988, summa cum laude). His 430 page doctoral dissertation was titled: "Dating the Book of Revelation: An Exegetical and Historical Argument for a Pre-A.D. 70 Composition." His dissertation readers were Dr. George W. Knight III, Dr. Jay E. Adams, and Dr. C. Gregg Singer. His dissertation was eventually published as Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Book of Revelation, and has gone through two editions and several printings.
He has taught various theological and biblical courses at Christ College in Lynchburg, Virginia and Bahnsen Theological Seminary in Fullerton, California. He has spoken at over sixty conferences throughout the nation, including the Ligonier Conference in Orlando, and has appeared on dozens of Christian radio programs. Though he lectures on a variety of theological and worldview themes, his conference and radio ministry has focused primarily on eschatology, the Book of Revelation, biblical law, and creation. He is available for conference ministry through GoodBirth Ministries.

Writing Ministry

Dr. Gentry not only has a great desire to teach Christian truth but also to promote it through writing. He founded and teaches a correspondence course on research writing, and publication called "Righteous Writing." In that course he trains Christians to be effective communicators (that course is available at his commercial site: KennethGentry.Com).
He has also written scores of articles appearing in Christianity Today, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Westminster Theological Journal, Tabletalk, The Banner of Truth, Faith Over All of Life, The Presbyterian Journal, Contra Mundum, Antithesis, and numerous other magazines and journals. Our ministry was established to provide him more time to release additional articles and studies of value to Christian faith and living.
In addition to brief articles, he has authored a number of books including:
  • The Beast of Revelation
  • Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Book of Revelation
  • A Biblical Defense of Predestination
  • The Book of Revelation Made Easy: You Can Understand Biblical Prophecy
  • The Charismatic Gift of Prophecy
  • The Christian Case Against Abortion
  • Covenantal Theonomy
  • God Gave Wine
  • God's Law in the Modern World
  • God's Law Made Easy
  • The Great Tribulation: Past or Future? (with Thomas D. Ice)
  • The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a Fallen World
  • He Shall Have Dominion: A Postmillennial Eschatology
  • House Divided: The Break-up of Dispensational Theology (with Greg L. Bahnsen)
  • Lord of the Saved
  • Nourishment from the Word: Select Studies in Reformed Theology
  • Olivet Discourse Made Easy
  • Perilous Times: A Study in Eschatological Evil
  • Postmillennialism Made Easy
  • Predestination Made Easy
  • Yea, Hath God Said?: The Framework Hypothesis / Six Day Creation Debate (with Michael R Butler).
Books
    He has also contributed chapters to several books by various publishers:
  • The Covenant: God's Voluntary Condescension (Joseph A. Pipa and C. N. Wilborn, eds.)
  • Creation According to the Scriptures (P. Andrew Sandlin, ed.).
  • Four Views on the Book of Revelation (C. Marvin Pate, ed.)
  • The Standard Bearer: A Festschrift for Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen (Steven M. Schlissel, ed.).
  • Thine Is the Kingdom (Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., ed.).
  • Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond (Darrell L. Bock, ed.).
  • When Shall These Things Be: A Reformed Response to Hyper-preterism (Keith L. Mathison, ed.).
He is currently researching a full-length, academic commentary on the Book of Revelation. The working title for this project is: The Divorce of Israel: A Redemptive-Historical Interpretation of the Book of Revelation. This project is being subsidized by free-will gifts from interested donors. GoodBirth is now seeking to raise support for this important project. Please see our "Future Projects" section for project ideas for which we are currently seeking funding.

sexta-feira, 27 de julho de 2012

COVENANT AND SCRIPTURE


By Kenneth L. Gentry Jr
Covenant bible
The Bible is very much a covenant document, as even a cursory reading demonstrates. The biblical words for “covenant” appear often in Scripture. The Hebrew berith occurs 285 times in the Old Testament, while the Greek word diatheke appears thirty times in the New Test-ament. Thus, we might well state that “the Biblical category which does the greatest justice to the persistence of God’s activity among his people is the covenant relation.” Indeed, the covenant “is the primary way in which the Bible portrays the relationship between God and his people.” Most Bible scholars hold that the covenant idea is a dominant biblical theme in Scripture.
Mutually established covenants are common among the ancients, as we see from numerous examples both in Scripture and in ancient non-biblical texts. By way of example, we might notice the covenants between Abraham and Abimelech (Ge 21:22–32), Isaac and Abimelech (Ge 26:26–31), Jacob and Laban (Ge 31:43–55), Joshua and the Gibeonites (Jos 9:3–15), and Solomon and Hiram (1Ki 5:12). Such mutually established covenants are similar to modern contracts and treaties, although with some important differences. These human covenants are between roughly equal parties: man to man.
Also appearing in Scripture are the much more important sovereignly established divine covenants. The parties in these are decidedly unequal: the infinite-eternal, perfect God and finite-temporal, fallen man. History-structuring divine covenants of epochal significance include those established with Adam (Hos 6:7), Noah (Ge 6:18), Abraham (Ge 15:18), Israel (Ex 24:8), and David (Ps 89:3). Off in the future from the Old Testament perspective lay the glorious, final, consummative “new covenant” (Jer 31:31–34). These divine covenants are unique to the biblical record, for “outside the Old Testament we have no clear evidence of a treaty between a god and his people.”
I will deal with the significance of these covenants for Scripture in a following blog where I demonstrate the relationship of “Covenant and Redemption.”

quinta-feira, 26 de julho de 2012

100 Million Poor People In America And 39 Other Facts About Poverty That Will Blow Your Mind


By Michael Snyder
Every single day more Americans fall into poverty.  This should deeply alarm you no matter what political party you belong to and no matter what your personal economic philosophy is.  Right now, approximately 100 million Americans are either “poor” or “near poor”. 

For a lot of people “poverty” can be a nebulous concept, so let’s define it.  The poverty level as defined by the federal government in 2010 was $11,139 for an individual and $22,314 for a family of four.  Could you take care of a family of four on less than $2000 a month?  Millions upon millions of families are experiencing a tremendous amount of pain in this economy, and no matter what “solutions” we think are correct, the reality is that we all should have compassion on them.  Sadly, things are about to get even worse.  The next major economic downturn is rapidly approaching, and when it hits the statistics posted below are going to look even more horrendous.
When it comes to poverty, most Americans immediately want to get into debates about tax rates and wealth redistribution and things like that.
But the truth is that they are missing the main point.
The way we slice up the pie is not going to solve our problems, because the pie is constantly getting smaller.
Our economic infrastructure is being absolutely gutted, the U.S. dollar is slowly losing its status as the reserve currency of the world and we are steadily getting poorer as a nation.
Don’t be fooled by the government statistics that show a very small amount of “economic growth”.  Those figures do not account for inflation.
After accounting for inflation, our economic growth has actually been negative all the way back into the middle of the last decade.
According to numbers compiled by John Williams of shadowstats.com, our “real GDP” has continually been negative since 2005.
So that means we are getting poorer as a nation.
Meanwhile, we have been piling up astounding amounts of debt.
40 years ago the total amount of debt in the United States (government, business and consumer) was less than 2 trillion dollars.
So we have a massive problem.
Our economic pie is shrinking and millions of Americans have been falling out of the middle class.  Meanwhile, we have been piling up staggering amounts of debt in order to maintain our vastly inflated standard of living.  As our economic problems get even worse, those trends are going to accelerate even more.
So don’t look down on the poor.  You might be joining them a lot sooner than you might think.
The following are 40 facts about poverty in America that will blow your mind….
#1 In the United States today, somewhere around 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.
#2 It is being projected that when the final numbers come out later this year that the U.S. poverty rate will be the highest that it has been in almost 50 years.
#3 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.
#4 Today, one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the poverty level.
#5 According to the Wall Street Journal, 49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives financial benefits from the government.  Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
#6 It is projected that about half of all American adults will spend at least some time living below the poverty line before they turn 65.
#7 Today, there are approximately 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.  That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
#8 During 2010, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty.  That was the largest increasethat we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
#9 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of “very poor” rose in 300 out of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.
#10 Since Barack Obama became president, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by 6 million and the number of Americans on food stamps has risen by 14 million.
#11 Right now, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every fourAmerican children is on food stamps.
#12 It is projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they turn 18 years of age.
#13 The poverty rate for children living in the United States is 22 percent, although when the new numbers are released in the fall that number is expected to go even higher.
#14 One university study estimates that child poverty costs the U.S. economy 500 billion dollars a year.
#15 Households that are led by a single mother have a 31.6% poverty rate.
#16 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.
#17 According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4 percent of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1 percent of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6 percent of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6 percent of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.
#18 Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.
#19 Child homelessness in the United States has risen by 33 percent since 2007.
#20 There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30% of the children are facing food insecurity.
#21 More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.
#22 A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7 percent) than has ever been measured before.
#23 If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.
#24 A lot of younger Americans have found that they cannot make it on their own in this economy.  Today, approximately25 million American adults are living with their parents.
#25 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.
#26 Amazingly, the wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.
#27 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.
#28 At this point, the poorest 50% of all Americans now control just 2.5% of all of the wealth in this country.
#29 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs.  Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#30 Right now, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
#31 Half of all American workers earn $505 or less per week.
#32 In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.  By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.
#33 Federal housing assistance outlays increased by a whopping 42 percent between 2006 and 2010.
#34 Approximately 50 million Americans do not have any health insurance at all right now.
#35 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, approximately one out of every 6Americans is on Medicaid.
#36 It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
#37 Back in 1990, the federal government accounted for 32 percent of all health care spending in America.  Today, that figure is up to 45 percent and it is projected to surpass 50 percent very shortly.
#38 Overall, the amount of money that the federal government gives directly to the American people has risen by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.
#39 It was recently reported that 1.5 million American families live on less than two dollars a day (before counting government benefits).
#40 The unemployment rate in the U.S. has been above 8 percent for 40 months in a row, and 42 percent of all unemployed Americans have been out of work for at least half a year.
Recently, I wrote a long article about why there will never be enough jobs in the United States ever again.
That means that a whole lot of Americans are not going to be able to take care of themselves.
As our economy gets even worse, there is going to be a tremendous need for more love, compassion and generosity all over the country.
Don’t be afraid to lend a helping hand, because someday you may need one yourself.

COVENANT IN SCRIPTURE

BY Kenneth L. Gentry Jr


In Scripture the covenant structures God’s relationship with man and exercises a dominant influence on the flow of redemptive history. It is, in fact, “one of the most important motifs in biblical theology.” Indeed, biblical theology shows that “redemption and eschatology are co-eval throughout biblical history.” We see this illustrated, for example, when the Lord Jesus Christ “specifically linked the Lord’s Supper with the eschatological perspective of the kingdom of God” (Lk 22:16, 18; cp. 1Co 11:26).
Not only so, but as Michael Horton observes: “a biblical-theological understanding of covenant ties things together in systematic theology whose relations are often strained: ecclesiology (the context of the cove-nant), theology proper (the covenant maker), anthropology (the covenant partner), christology (the covenant mediator) soteriology (the covenant blessings), eschatology (the covenant’s con-summation).” In light of all of this — and especially in that eschatology is “the covenant’s consummation” — the covenant concept exercises a tremendous bearing on eschatology.
We may define covenant as a legal bond that establishes a favorable relation between parties based on certain specified terms and promises blessings for faithful adherence to those terms, while threatening curses for unfaithful departure from them.
In a covenant the parties solemnly swear to maintain certain specified obligations outlined therein. Scripture notes regarding God’s covenant with Abraham: “Since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself” (Heb 6:13). As legal obligations covenant parties maintain favo-rable relations only by faithfully keeping their stipulated terms. Of the covenant set before Israel under Moses, we read: “I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity. . . . I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse” (Dt 34:15, 19). Obedience to covenantal demands brings blessings; disobedience brings cursings (cf. Dt 28:1ff; Lev 26:3ff). Thus, a covenant forms a legal bond that establishes and protects specified rights.
In the next few posts, I will be focusing on the covenant, eventually showing that it underscores the postmillennial hope. See you tomorrow?

IS CALLING DISPENSATIONALISTS “LITERALISTS” UNFAIR?


ByKenneth L. Gentry Jr
Recently a reader named Joel wrote to me asking the following:
“I have a question. In trying to have integrity in our work, especially when critiquing another position, we should present the opposite view the way they would. Although I’m definitely not dispensational, I know some pastors who wouldn’t agree with saying that “literalism” is correct but rather “historical grammatical literal” interpretation. Do you think you are misrepresenting some dispensationalist? Or at least putting them all in one box?”
My response to Joel:
Thanks for your question and your concern. I hear this objection from time-to-time, though I must confess that it always surprises me. You are correct in noting that we need to accurately present an opponent that we are critiquing. And I believe that I have done so. Let me reply to your nice note just briefly:
First, my criticism of dispensationalism is of the dominant viewpoint, technically known as “Revised Dispensationalism” (as per Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock) but popularly known simply as “dispensationalism.” [1] The view that I critique is that which is presented in the multi-million selling works by Charles Ryrie, John Walvoord, J. D. Pentecost, Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsey, and others. Very seldom do you see a “Progressive Dispensationalist” calling himself a “dispensationalist” without the descriptor: “progressive.”
Furthermore this form of dispensationalism is the dominant view held in thousands upon thousands of churches in America. Thus, please be aware that I am critiquing what is commonly known and accepted as simply: “dispensationalism.”
Second, dispensationalists of this dominant variety, constantly argue that they are literalists. This term is not being put in their mouths by me or others. Let me cite just a few samples from their own works ( will bold the relevant words):
J. Dwight Pentecost
On p. 1 of Dwight Pentecost’s massive work, Things to Come he states: ”When Allis acknowledges that ‘Literalinterpretation has always been a marked feature of Premillennialism’ he is in agreement with [dispensationalist] Feinberg, who writes: ‘… it can be shown that the reason the early Church was premillennial was traceable to its interpretation of the Word in a literal manner….’”
Then on p. 9 he presents a centered heading to introduce a new section in his book: “II. The Literal Method.” His mains below that are: “A. The definition of the literal method” (p. 9). “B. The evidence for the literal method” (p. 9). “C. The advantages of the literal method” (p. 11). And so on. He continues such in the next chapter titled “The History of Interpretation.” His third key point in this chapter is: “III. Literalism in the Time of Christ” (p. 17).
John F. Walvoord
John Walvoord in his large work, Prophecy Knowledge Handbook, makes an important argument early on, when on p. 10 he writes: “Because approximately half of the prophecies of the Bible have already been fulfilled in a literalway, it gives a proper intellectual basis for assuming that prophecy yet to be fulfilled will likewise have a literalfulfillment.” On p. 14 he reiterates this: “Fulfilled prophecy is an important guide in interpreting prophecy unfulfilled and generally confirms the concept of literal interpretation of a prophecy.” Then on p. 15 he states that “it may be demonstrated that most prophecy should be interpreted literally.”
Charles C. Ryrie
Ryrie has updated his important 1965 work (formerly titled:Dispensationalism Today). He now simply calls it:Dispensationalism (1995). His original version was widely acknowledged as the definition of dispensationalism.
In chapter 5 he considers: “The Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism.” In that chapter he presents a major heading: “The Different Viewpoints.” His first sub-head under that heading is “The Dispensational Position.” That section opens: “Literalhermeneutics. Dispensationalist claim that their principle of hermeneutics is that of literal interpretation” (p. 80).
Ryrie follows Walvoord (and others) when he writes on p. 81: “A second reason why dispensationalist believe in theliteral principle is a biblical one: the prophecies in the Old Testament  concerning the first coming of Christ — His birth, His rearing, His ministry, His death, His resurrection — were all fulfilled literally. That argues strongly for theliteral method.”
Robert L. Thomas
In Tim LaHaye’s Popular Encyclopedia of Bible Prophecy (2004) we find Robert Thomas’ article: “Hermeneutics.” He notes on p. 139: “Only the futurist approach to Revelation accepts the book’s self-claim of being a prophecy and interprets it literally. Embracing the premillennial return of Christ, it utilizes a normal hermeneutical pattern of interpretation.”
Elmer Towns
In that same book (PEBP), Elmer Towns contributes an article titled: “Dispensationalism.” In his encyclopedia definition of dispensationalism he states in part: “Because the Bible is God’s literal Word and His plan for history,we should interpret it literally” (p. 82). On p. 83 his first point under “Essentials of Dispensationalism” is: “First Essential: Consistent Literal Interpretation.”
Conclusion
These are just a few samples of the prevailing tendency in the dominant form of dispensationalism to call their system of interpretation “literalism.” It is certainly a mistake on their part, but it nevertheless is their mistake, not mine. Interestingly, the issue of literalism is one of the major distinctions that Progressive Dispensationalists make between themselves and the more popular form of dispensationalism. Progressives deny simple literalism.

Footnotes
[1] See ch. 9 “Progressive Dispensationalism” in Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism (1995).

terça-feira, 24 de julho de 2012

GOD’S WORD AND THE POSTMILLENNIAL HOPE


By Kenneth L. Gentry Jr
Postmillennialism is an eschatology of The Book. Postmillennialism depends for its proof, not on newspaper reports, contemporary statistics, and psychological states, but upon on the Word of God. Elsewhere on this site I defend postmillennialism from within Scripture. Sadly too many will not listen to the postmillennial argument from Scripture, but will point to troubles in the world today to discount its hope-filled optimism. But we cannot discount God’s word.
God’s word is creative, providential, prophetic, and restorative. History truly genuinely “his story.” God creates the world and man for his own glory (Ro 11:36; Rev 4:11).
The Scriptures teach that God controls history by the exercise of his almighty wisdom and power. In fact, the whole idea of predictive prophecy depends on this view of history, in that for any prophesied events to occur requires that all preceding and concurrently related events throughout the world and history must fall into place according to plan. Almost always (Christ and John Baptist being notable exceptions) the individual involved in the fulfillment of prophecy is unaware that his free action is fulfilling God’s prophecy.
Our sovereign God’s word is creatively constructive. That is, it brings reality into existence (Ge 1; Heb 11:3) and it directs all historical processes (Isa 46:10; 55:11). This two-fold reality of the creative and providential word links the authority of God’s word into human experience. The psalmist notes that the word of the Lord both sovereignly makes and providentially governs the heavens and the earth (Ps 33:6–11). He also notes that it is his creative and sovereign word that reveals to man righteousness and justice: “For the word of the Lord is upright; and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice” (Ps 33:4–5a). God’s word/command is the standard of right and wrong obligations, as it was in the garden of Eden.
Even Adam’s unfallen nature was not an ultimate moral standard, but a derivative one. As Cornelius Van Til teaches, Adam was receptively reconstructive of God’s word, rather than creatively constructive. He was to think God’s thoughts after him on the creaturely level. Even in his unfallen state, he knew that he was created to live by supernatural, positive revelation, not by autonomous self-direction. The method by which Adam knows good and evil is by obedience to God’s revelatory word.
Thus, as evangelical Christians we must hold firmly to the truthfulness of God’s word. We need to be like the first grade girl dealing with her unbelieving teacher: The little girl was in art period drawing a picture of Jonah being swallowed by a whale. Her teacher looked at the drawing and said: “Jonah could not have been swallowed by a whale and lived, it would have killed him.” The little girl insisted he was swallowed by a whale because the Bible said so. But the teacher gently kept informing the little girl of her error. In exasperation the little girl finally complained: “When I get to heaven I am going to ask Jonah if he was swallowed by a whale.” The teacher responded: “What if Jonah didn’t go to heaven?” The little girl quickly replied: “Well then you can ask him.”

A DEFENSE OF POSTMILLENNIALISM


By a Puritan Lad
“A Psalm of David. The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” (Psalms 110:1)

“Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15:24-26)

“No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.”
(Joy To The World – 3rd Stanza)

As a preterist, I have been accused of undermining the importance of Christ’s Second Advent. I would respond to my futurist opponents that they undermine the importance of His First Advent, as the Christmas Carol above shows. O how different the future looks according to the Bible, when compared to that of our modern day “prophecy experts”. The Biblical outlook, as previously put forth, is one of Christian victory. The Dispensationalist outlook is one of defeat, at least as far as planet earth is concerned. After all, “Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth”, they say. They look forward to being snatched off of this planet before “the restraining influence of the Holy Spirit is removed with the Church to allow the onset of the 7 year period of unrestrained evil” (See The 'Great Escape' Misunderstanding). BTW: I have yet to hear a suitable explanation of how 144,000 Jews will be saved during the tribulation without the Holy Spirit. Oddly enough, these people continue to sing “Victory in Jesus”, but limit that victory to some abstract, end-of-all-things type of victory. David Chilton explains the negative impact of such a worldview on the church itself.

“For too long, Christians have been characterized by despair, defeat, and retreat. For too long, Christians have heeded the false doctrine which teaches that we are doomed to failure, that Christians cannot win –the notion that, until Jesus returns, Christians will steadily lose ground to the enemy. The future of the Church, we were told, is to be a steady slide into apostasy… Any new outbreak of war, any rise in crime statistics, any new evidence of the breakdown of the family, was often oddly viewed as progress, a step forward toward the expected goal of the total collapse of civilization, a sign that Jesus might come to rescue us at any moment. Social action projects were looked on with skepticism: it was often assumed that anyone who actually tried to improve the world must not really believe the Bible, because the Bible taught that such efforts were bound to be futile; as one famous preacher put it, “You don’t polish brass on a sinking ship… Evangelism was an invitation to join the losing side.

This was rooted in two problems. One was a false view of Spirituality. The unbiblical idea of “spirituality” is that the truly “spiritual” man is the person who is sort of “non-physical”, who doesn’t get involved in “earthly” things, who doesn’t work very much or think very hard, and who spends most of his time meditating about how he’d rather be in heaven. As long as he’s on earth, though, he has one main duty in life: Get stepped on for Jesus. The “spiritual” man, in this view, is a wimp; a loser. But at least he’s a Good Loser….The second obstacle to Christian action has been an eschatology of defeat …As a young Christian, I remember my Bible teachers informing me that they had “peeked at the last chapter (of the Bible), and the Christians win!” But that is just my point: according to certain popular brands of eschatology, victory takes place only in “the last chapter.” In time, in history, on earth, the Christians lose. The world is getting worse and worse. Antichrist is coming. The devil is running the world, and getting more and more powerful all the time. Your work for God in this world will have no lasting effect, except to save a few individuals from hell. But you’d better do it quickly, before the Tribulation hits, so that you can escape in time. Ironically, the unintentional message of this gospel is: Antichrist is coming! There is something terribly lopsided about that.
” (David Chilton – Paradise Restored, pp. 3-4).

The Bible, on the other hand, teaches that the world will be redeemed for Christ. The Great Commission will be a success, not a failure. For most of history, this was the expectation of the church. It was this expectation of victory that sparked the Revivals in England and Scotland, drove missionaries like William Carey on 15,000 mile voyages to India and other remote regions of the planet, and was the foundation of the London and Scottish Missionary Societies. (See link to Iain Murray's book below for details.)

“And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever,” (Daniel 2:44)

What is the nature of the kingdom of God? While all Christians expect the ultimate consummation of His kingdom at His Second Advent (2 Timothy 4:1), what about now? Dispensationalists wait for Christ to set up his kingdom on earth and reign from earthly Jerusalem for 1,000 years. (See “Millennium” under the Rapture Ready Glossary). They giveRevelation 20:3-4 as their proof text. If you are a premillennialist, I challenge you. Click on the Scripture link to Revelation 20:3-4, or look at it in your own Bible. Does this passage say anything about Christ reigning ON EARTH for 1,000 years?

I have already shown what the Premillennial interpretation of the 1,000 years does to the doctrine of the resurrection, particularly to Jesus’ words in John 5:28-29 and John 6:39-44. You can also throw in 1 Corinthians 15:24, which has the resurrection taking place at “the end”. There are several other issues to look at as well. First, the premillennial view demands that Christ must once again abdicate his heavenly throne at the Father’s right hand in order to reign on earth for 1,000 years, and then finally destroy all of His enemies at the end of that reign (Revelation 20:7-10). However, Psalm 110:1 is clear that He will remain at the father’s “right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” Second, one of the results of the First Resurrection is that those who participate in it are priests and kings with Christ, a blessing John has already affirmed to be a present reality (Revelation 1:6). Jesus has already ascended to the throne of David (Acts 2:25-36), and we have been “resurrected” out of our “trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1) as Christ “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6). There is no reason to believe that He will ever again sit in a temple made by human hands (assuming that the temple will ever be rebuilt, and that is a big assumption). As we can see from the prophecy in Daniel, Christ’s everlasting kingdom was to be set up during the Roman Empire. (Kenneth Gentry has a good article on "The Meaning of the Millennium"). We have the words of the New Testament to confirm this.

"…the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Matthew 3:2Matthew 4:7Matthew 10:7).

“But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Matthew 12:28)

“Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28)

“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,” (Colossians 1:13)

As we can see, Christ kingdom, His Church, is on earth now. Jesus said to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world." (John 18:36). The text does not say, as some foolishly teach, that Christ's Kingdom is irrelevant to the world; rather, it affirms that the Kingdom is not derived from earth: He was speaking of the source of His authority, not the place of His legitimate reign. For He also tells Pilate, the earthly governor, that “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11). His kingdom is not of this world but it is in this world and over it.

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And 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 one that shall not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14)

Contrary to the Premillennial view, the kingdom will not be consummated by some cataclysmic eschatological event, but will gradually overtake the world, like leaven (Matthew 13:33). It will not be by military might, but by the everlasting gospel.

“As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” (Daniel 2:34-35)

Christ has built His church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18), neither in this age, nor the next.

“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.” (Psalms 22:27-28).

"For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2:14)

Postmillennialists believe that there will be a time when Judaists reject their false religion in favor of Christ (not in any “tribulation period”, but in the church age). This, in turn, will result in even great blessings for the gentiles. Whether or not the “millennium” speaks of this current age or of that “golden age” is open for debate. The puritans of the past, however, were almost exclusively postmillennial. The future conversion of the Jewish people to Christ is the main event that separates Amillennialist Preterist and the Poastmillennial Preterist. The main passage in support of this is Romans 11:24-32.

“For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree. Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, "The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob"; "and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins." As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.” (Romans 11:24-32)

The unity of Jews and Gentiles during a future golden age is found not only in Romans, but in several other passages as well. On this point, Romans 11 agrees with many Old Testament Prophecies.

“Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.” (Isaiah 26:19).

Richard Sibbes writes, “The Jews are not yet come in under Christ’s banner; but God, that hath persuaded Japhet to come into the tents of Shem, will persuade Shem to come into the tents of Japhet, (Genesis 9:27). The “fullness of the Gentiles is not yet come in (Romans 11:25), but Christ, that hath the ‘utmost parts of the earth given him for his possession’, (Psalm 2:8), will gather all the sheep his Father hath given him into one fold, that there may be one sheepfold and one shepherd, (John 10:16).”

There is debate on whether or not these Old Testament prophecies refer to the Hebrew nation or the church. Most postmillennialists would hold to the former, whereas Amillennialists would hold to the latter. I am inclined to agree with the Amillennialist on this point (we’ll examine the Church and Israel in the next post). However, there is little doubt in my mind that Romans 11 clearly refers to Israel after the flesh, and it will take a good exegetical argument from this passage to convince me otherwise.


Source: http://covenant-theology.blogspot.com.br/2006/12/defense-of-postmillennialism.html