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Christ’s body is the true temple and as Paul put it, “We are the temple of the living God” (2 Cor. 6:16), what use remains for a future literal temple?
At the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me. . . . This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:19–20). He instituted the divinely approved method of commemorating his sacrificial work, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
Jesus told the Samaritan woman that he could give her living water and that “whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst” (John 4:14). Jesus declared that he fulfilled the image Ezekiel foretold in chapter 37 of his prophecy when he spoke of water flowing from the
The period of time between the first and second advent of Jesus Christ—the time between the establishment of Christ’s kingdom as described in the Gospels and the consummation of all things—is the same period described in Revelation 20 as a “thousand years.”
In Luke 20:34–36, Jesus declared, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels.
This age, Jesus said, is characterized by marriage and things temporal. The age to come, on the other hand, is characterized by resurrection life and immortality. So it is impossible that natural, earthly life will continue after the general resurrection that will occur at our Lord’s return (John 6:39–40, 44, 54).
The idea of a general resurrection occurring at Christ’s second advent presents a serious problem for premillennialists who argue that people in natural bodies continue to populate the earth during Christ’s millennial rule after the resurrection of the righteous. If the age to come is the age of resurrection in which there are no marriages or sexual relationships, how can people escape this universal event and repopulate the earth after Christ returns? This is an impossibility.
Whenever “this age” is used, it is always in reference to things temporal, things destined to perish.
Those who are Christ’s have already crossed over from death to life and will be raised at the last day (John 6:39–40, 44).
The most serious problem faced by all premillenarians is the presence of evil in the millennial age.
Are they the redeemed? If so, the premillennialist has just introduced a second fall of humanity into sin into the course of redemptive history. This time, however, we have a fall of glorified saints after the resurrection and the judgment. This simply cannot be, though premillennial commentators ignore the force of this, choosing instead to make the hermeneutical crux an overly rigid exegesis of the first resurrection of Revelation 20:5,[12] often overlooking the important parallel passage in John 5:24–25, which explicitly tells us when the first resurrection occurs—at the moment of
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There is also the intriguing possibility of a parallel passage to Revelation 20:1–10 found in 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12, where Paul spoke of the coming of our Lord occurring after an unprecedented apostasy and the revelation of the man of sin, all because the one who presently restrains such activity ceases to do so. Indeed, this apostasy ends, and the man of sin is destroyed by the splendor of our Lord’s coming, events that sound much like those depicted in Revelation 20:7–10.
The contrast between the two ages is not redemptive-historical but a contrast between the temporal and the eternal.
specifically as they relate to the two-age model as an interpretive grid. I am thinking here of the “last day,” the “day of the Lord,” and the “last trumpet.”
This does not sound like the postmillennial vision of the triumph of the kingdom in this present evil age. Paul expected that believers would at times suffer greatly at the hands of unbelievers and would not completely conquer unbelief with great political, economic, and cultural benefits until the Lord returns. This explains why Christians are to be salt and light in this age, fully confident that Christ will ultimately deliver them.
But when the last trumpet sounds, the kingdom of the world will at long last become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ (Rev. 11:15). It is then, and only then, that our blessed Lord Jesus will hand his kingdom over to his Father (1 Cor. 15:24–25). Our last and greatest enemy, death, will finally be destroyed.
The present dispensation results from humanity’s ability to frustrate God’s redemptive-historical purposes.
But the New Testament knows nothing of a kingdom offered and a kingdom withdrawn according to the whims of unbelieving Israel. In fact, as the New Testament era opened, we were told that the kingdom was “at hand” because Jesus Christ had come. Indeed, the apostle Paul could not be any clearer when he said that it was God’s sovereign purpose in Christ from before the foundation of the world to save those whom the Father had chosen. It is difficult to develop the idea that the church age is a redemptive-historical postponement from Paul’s language in Ephesians 1:3–14 (cf. 2 Tim. 1:9).
But this would have been a thoroughly secularized and politicized kingdom. In many ways, it is the kingdom envisioned by dispensationalists and postmillenarians. Jesus spoke of a different kingdom, where God would bring deliverance from humanity’s true enemy, the guilt and power of sin. Because Jesus did not offer the economic, political, and nationalistic kingdom so many in Israel longed for, he was put to death.
Though Israel as a whole did not embrace Jesus and his messianic mission, the kingdom he brought was a reality, nonetheless. In fact, the present reality of the kingdom is a major theme throughout the New Testament.
It is clear that the kingdom had come in power. These miracles pointed to the arrival of the great age of salvation, which dawned because Jesus Christ had come. If Jesus could make the blind see, he can give believers the eyes of faith. If Jesus could make the lame walk, he can show sinners the way of faith and repentance. If Jesus could cure leprosy, he can remove the guilt and stain of sin. If Jesus could give hearing to the deaf, he can grant
understanding into the mysteries of the gospel. And if Jesus could raise the dead, he can give new spiritual life.
Even though these miracles were provisional, they were signs that the kingdom had come, not that it had been offered.
When Pilate asked our Lord about the nature of this kingdom, Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. . . . But now my kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36). Jesus’s kingdom was a spiritual kingdom, completely unlike the nationalistic kingdom Israel expected. This should also be a caution to those who would see Jesus’s kingdom in terms of nationalism or secular progress in economics, politics, and culture.
Romans 14:17, when he wrote, “The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
Therefore, a redemptive understanding of the kingdom should lead to proper political and social actions as consequences of the present kingdom. But political and social actions in themselves cannot be tangible signs that the kingdom of God is present.
Though this point is often overlooked when discussing the nature of the millennial age, Christ’s resurrection is, in fact, central to it.
This is also why Paul spoke of believers already raised with Christ and seated in the heavenlies even while they are still living on earth (Eph. 2:6; Col. 2:12–13; 3:1).
A clue as to how Paul understood this twofold resurrection for believers is seen in 2 Corinthians 4:16: “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”
Once Jesus burst from the tomb, the age to come dawned, and the new creation commenced. Easter Sunday was the birthday of the new world. The empty tomb was the sign and seal of the new creation.
Even though Calvin saw but one people of God throughout redemptive history, he was not ready to say that God has no more place for ethnic Israel in his redemptive purposes.
Type and shadow give way to fulfillment and the ever-increasing redemptive-historical clarity found in Jesus Christ.
Christ destroys all racial, gender, and socioeconomic distinctions in his kingdom.
The church is not a plan B or a contingency developed by God in hasty response to Israel’s rejection of Jesus and his messianic kingdom.
What separates amillenarians from postmillenarians is the fact that amillenarians do not necessarily believe that things will get better for God’s people on a global scale. In fact, things may get worse.
participating in the sufferings of Christ, we are transformed into his image, a process finally completed when Christ comes again in glory.
“Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
The church triumphs by suffering with Christ, not by taking dominion over the world and controlling its political institutions, economic resources, and cultural establishments.
God always humbles the proud but exalts the weak and downcast.
Christ’s kingdom cannot be gained by prestige, power, or purity. It can be entered only when God bestows it upon whom he wills.
series of antichrists who arise within the church and are tied to a particular heresy, the denial that Jesus Christ is God in human flesh.
form of state-sponsored heresy and the persecution of Christ’s church and the people of God.
In opposition to the city of God (the New Jerusalem), even now coming down out of heaven, the beast will seduce the harlot-city Babylon and proclaim it the “city of man.” The beast’s number, 666, is the number of man, indicating that the beast can never enter God’s rest nor rise to deity.
In Genesis 4, we read that the city of man’s first builder was Cain, followed by Lamech, Nimrod, and then a host of other self-deified messianic pretenders.
The beast mimics Christ but always falls short. Six represents fallen humanity, always laboring but never entering the Sabbath rest (the seventh day of creation typifying the eternal Sabbath rest). The triple 6s indicate the beast, who along with the dragon (Satan) and the second beast (or false prophet) mimics the Holy Trinity but is condemned to fall short of completeness. The beast can never rise above humanity to attain the deity it so
The worship of the state or its leader is a real and pressing threat to all Christians. Statism can easily become false religion and idolatry whenever the state claims divine prerogatives and privileges for itself. This is the very essence of the beast. Anyone who confesses that “Caesar is Lord” is denying that “Jesus is Lord.” Graphic illustrations of this are the swastika and the Nazi salute to Hitler—relatively recent manifestations of the mark.
Protestants were justified in identifying the Roman Church and those nations allied with it as the beast and the papacy as the seat of the Antichrist. And yet, the preaching of the gospel restrained these Roman Catholic nations from destroying those churches that embraced the doctrine of justification, sola fide.
The unholy alliance between pope and prince, described above, has been replaced by the socialist democracies of the EU, which are virtually secularized and take little interest in religious matters.
If John is clear about anything, it is that the Lamb wins in the end, not the dragon. When Satan and his surrogates wage war on the saints and kill them (Rev. 13:7), John tells us that the saints come to life and reign with Christ for a thousand years (Rev. 20:4). Yet, the ongoing victory of the Lamb can only be seen through the eyes of faith until that day when Jesus returns in all his glory, accompanied by the hosts of heaven.
But we look for an intensification of this sign in the appearance of the antichrist whom Christ himself will destroy at his Second
