A couple of further comments: although the office of the papacy is by no means the only fulfillment of many eschatological prophecies throughout the New Testament, and particularly in the prophecy of John, I still find it hard not to see in that Corruption of truth the pinnacle and most outstanding example of the spirit of the biblical motif of end time degeneracy. And it is not simply the prophecy in I Timothy 4 which occasions me to present this opinion (although of that passage too the papacy is as clear a fulfillment as any other, from the apostolic age until our own). On the contrary, the explicit prophecies in the Apocalypse give me more confidence on this point than any other. Honestly, John, is it likely that, in the future, we will have a religious system spring into being, headed by one who claims virtually divine authority, that supposes his authority by usurping the place of Christ and not by denying him outright, that sits in the very temple of God demanding worldwide obeisance, that is situated, moreover, on a city of seven hills, said to be spiritual “Babylon,” — is it really likely that we’ll see another religious system come into existence that meets all of these specifics and more yet, that I haven’t mentioned? Moreover, is it wise, in the meantime, to suppose that the Catholic church, fulfilling so many of these prophecies so strikingly, has nothing to do with any of them, but just sprang up completely unforeshadowed by any divine revelation during the times of inscripturation? If we look at biblical prophecies with a presupposition that they will be fulfilled, and if we see in history a situation which comprehends the fulfillment of a vast constellation of them, why would we not assume that the prophetic vision of John is indeed unfolding throughout the course of history? But true to the title of this webpage, I’m rambling.

An additional question: where did you arrive at your view that the reformers assumed the Catholic church to be the true church? Martin Luther said the Vatican was the lid covering the pit of hell. Calvin said in no uncertain terms that the pope was the antichrist, and that the catholic church had long since been rejected by God for her apostasy, and was not at all the true church. And furthermore, having made that assumption, how was it that you supposed that an acceptance of the Catholic church as the true church, or else an embracing of the ECT movement, was an error of which I am in danger? I assure you that such an acceptance of the perversions and blasphemies and idolatries of the Catholic Church is quite the farthest thing from my mind. I’m a little confused how you derived that tendency from an article that calls the pope antichrist — but notwithstanding, I hope I am crystal clear now.

Once again, thanks. I appreciate your comments. Your recognition that prophecies of the end times do not necessarily have to indicate one historical fulfillment which quite excludes all other circumstances from partaking of the same nature is helpful. I agree that the prophecies seem to indicate an antichristian spirit and worldview and Satanic political/religious system which variously expresses itself all throughout this end time period. Compare John’s statement that there were, in his day, already many antichrists in the world, etc. Those who are religious leaders in the world system are by their nature Satanically-fueled substitutes for the true religion and the office of Christ, regardless of whether they appear in the guise of Muslims, Arians, Papists, or whatever other lie Satan has fabricated to deceive the nations and steal glory from Christ.

But in the end, Christ will conquer, his kingdom will spread throughout the earth, and every knee will bow to him. I delight to take up my cross and pursue that goal with you, my brother.

Much love in Him, Nathan

I would agree with Corbett in that your view of the Papacy does not answer many texts, though several texts do not seem to have a better explanation! It may be that many or most of these prophecies have yet to be fulfilled. We must be ever watching for the return of our Lord (Titus 2:13).

In the example of 1 Timothy 4, you presented this in light of Catholicism during the dark ages, expressly abstaining from meats and forbidding to marry. Do not forget that first of all, this was a problem in the early church (1 Corinthians 9:5[stretch], Romans 14). Secondly, there are many groups of people throughout history even up to the present who fit this description. Thirdly, the Catholic teaching has progressively gotten worse through the years.

One ‘danger’ :-) that I see, Nate, that the Reformers had of which we must be careful, is the misconception that the Catholic Church is (or was) the true church. It is understandable to see why those who have this mindset get involved with the ECT movement. God has reserved unto Himself a remnant. This remnant cannot be found in any denomination or creed, but only in the Lambs Book of Life and displayed through His grace in the hearts of His people. Though the Catholics certainly persecuted the church during the Middle Ages, it was not the first, last, or worse persecution the church has experienced. Even today, there are brothers and sisters who are being killed all the day long. Do you not think that the early church thought that these very prophecies were fulfilled in their time when Titus came through and Nero came to rule? Some seemingly were fulfilled then, but not all. I wonder if it is not the same in this situation.

I would agree with an optimistic view in that the Gospel will spread to the ends of the earth as God calls His remnant from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation. To this end, I devote my life. I strongly desire to spread His Gospel to His children. The most important thing that each of us can learn from eschatology is that our God is the Sovereign of the Universe. He has ultimate power over the universe and every event. It is to this very God that we all owe our lives as a living sacrifice and need not take thought for the morrow as He has it all planned. Let each one of us live our lives in light of this glorious truth and take risks for the kingdom!

1.) I did include the tendency of Hodges/Ryrie to reduce faith to mere intellectual assent under point number three. I included that particular problem there, because I believe the tendency has arisen, largely, due to the wrong dispensational understanding of the kingdom “offer”. Although I do agree that the emphasis on faith per se, over against faith in Christ, must contribute to the error. Concerning my view of the progress of revelation, the current post that deals with the topic to a greater degree than any other is the third post in the series of Institute lessons on hermeneutics (called “The Living Word”). The third post in that series deals with the centrality of Christ in the scriptures.

2.) I have not read McClain’s Greatness of the Kingdom. Regarding that whole topic, a couple works that I would recommend are Jonathan Edwards’ History of Redemption, and O. Palmer Robertson’s Christ of the Covenants.

3.) You are missing my point in your response to number three. I did not even address the whole “Plan B” argument that is so commonly raised in objection to dispensationalism. I suppose that objection, as I have usually heard it, can be countered in the same way that the objection against the Calvinist’s understanding of the genuine offer of the gospel can be countered. But that is not my point. My point is that, in your scheme, Christ offers to reign on the Davidic throne, as was prophesied of him in the prophets, and due to the Jews’ rejection of him, he postponed that Davidic reign. So then, the reality of his prophesied reign was indeed delayed by the Jews. in a very real sense, then, Christ reigns by invitation only. You will perhaps attempt to circumvent this observation by dichotomizing his eternal reign from his throne-of-David reign; but even in this, you will not have dealt sufficiently with the reality that, the rejection of the kingdom idea makes the Davidic reign a reign that is merely offered, and must be ratified by the people. In this, Christ’s long-prophesied reign looks strangely like the reign of the modern English monarchs, for instance in which the real power of authority resides in the will of the people. Christ’s Davidic reign is a reign of crushing those who are opposed to him with a rod of iron, not a reign of looking to his enemies for ratification.

4.) and 5.) If you are so clear on the “One New Covenant in which the church participates,” then how can you turn around and imagine a time in which the Old Covenant sacrifices will be re-instituted? When AH declares that the New Covenant causes the Old Covenant to vanish away (8:13), he immediately goes on to express just what it is about the Old Covenant that cannot exist in the reality of the inaugurated New Covenant. The whole OC worship cult is thus made obsolete (9:1); and at the heart of this cult is the blood of bulls and goats (9:12). The law only had a shadow of the coming things of Christ, and was able to accomplish nothing. The very continuance of the sacrifices brought to mind that no sacrifice had been sufficient. If one were sufficient, then they would have ceased to be offered (10:1-4). Therefore, when Christ came with a sacrifice that could suffice to take away sins, sacrifices did cease to be offered. And any renewal of these sacrifices would blasphemously presuppose that there remained a sacrifice necessary to take away sin – that Christ’s sacrifice had not been sufficient. It is the height of blasphemy, and the most grievous error of dispensationalism, to suppose that there will ever be a return to the old sacrifices of bulls and goats after Christ sacrificed himself for the putting away of sins. As far as your question of Timothy and Titus, I can’t help but believe that with Timothy, Paul allowed his circumcision simply to avoid any obvious social difference that may come up as a peripheral issue to the gospel that was to be Timothy’s main concern. I don’t think that Paul was dealing with those who were claiming that circumcision is necessary for salvation. When that mindset did reveal itself, the whole issue became integral to the very nature of the gospel, not just a side-issue, and so Paul clearly opposed the demand for circumcision lest he should be thought of as implicitly agreeing with the Judaizers’ teaching of circumcision as essential for salvation. Similarly, the Acts fifteen counsel wisely forbade Gentile Christians from doing anything that would serve as an irritant to the Jews who had been saved out of Judaism. But when anyone took the peculiarities of Judaism and taught them as integral to the way of salvation, Paul was the first to stand up and denounce them as teachers of another gospel (cf. Galatians).

6.) Thanks for your comments here. The mere facts of eschatology, i.e. suggested outlines of future events when isolated from the philosophy which underlies them, are to me quite minimal. I can rejoice with those who love the blessed hope and appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ while anticipating a vastly different order of end-time specificities.

7.) Again, I appreciate your comments here. To the degree that any of us detract from the all-encompassing centrality of Christ, we are to that degree in error, and in need of being corrected. I hope we can be a mutual source of rebuke and encouragement to each other as we strive to carry out this principle in every area of life.

Feel free, of course, to use our interactions in whatever paper you are presently working on. Although I cannot guarantee that all of my views are precisely in line with the majority concensus of traditional reformed thought, I would like to suppose that I accurately represent that theological tradition at least in all of its major emphases and understandings.

(1) Concerning the nature of faith I am surprised you did not mention the tendency to reduce faith to mental assent as the Zane Hodges crowd has done. Even Kierkegaard involved the volition in his idea of faith! A dose of good Calvinism would do us good here. I appreciate how you emphasized the centricity of the Coming Seed in the faith of these OT believers. I haven’t seen what you think about the concept of progress of revelation. Is that on any of these posts here?

(2) On the unity and significance of the Biblical story, I agree that many dispensationalists have made the dispensations like so many mailboxes on a country road. Nothing can go in more than one box, and you better not put anything in the wrong box. Everything is neat and tidy to be sure, but cohesion is missing. That’s why I have appreciated McClain’s Greatness of the Kingdom so much. He really does a good job maintaining cohesion as the plot of the Scriptures develops.

(3) I think I understand your point with the phrases, “God who is ‘sovereign’ by invitation only – who reigns unless he is rejected.” Obviously a statement like that is repugnant to Calvinists of all stripes. I do see Israel rejecting the offer, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t behind their blindness, hardening them in their sin. The church is not plan B, instituted because God couldn’t convince those rascally Jews to go with Plan A.

(4) One New Covenant in which the church participates, enough said.

(5) On the reinstitution of the sacrifice, I have a question. What do you think about Paul’s circumcision of Timothy over against his refusal to do so with Titus? These items (first century circumcision and millennial sacrifices) may not be related to you, but they are related in my system, so I want to see what you have to say.

(6) I like the phrase “red-heifer hopefuls.” It has a ring to it. This is actually a part of dispensationalism which does not belong to the system of thought as it has been presented (with reasonable consistency) in the credible literature. Dispensationalists are futurists. Twentieth-century Zionism has nothing to do with God’s eschatological dealings with Israel (at least as far as we can know). I’m glad people are eager for God’s blessing, but as you said it seems to be simply veiled materialism, and twisting God’s arm by helping Israel develop nukes and satellite intelligence is not healthy thinking, especially when it makes all the other oil-producing nations angry.

(7) I am sensitive to your call for Christocentricity in exegesis, theology, and all of life. I think we dispensationalists can be a little too mailbox-oriented. We can miss the forest for the trees. But we are agonizing and learning with the other conservative traditions to gain a good vista of both forest and trees through the Scriptures.

Thanks again for the critique it has been helpful to me. The theological portion of my exegesis paper relates to the distinction between Israel and the Church, so I have been using you as a sounding-board to some extent. I hope that you do not mind. I’ll be sure to find representatives of your views in print for the paper, but in the mean time this discussion has been very helpful for my thinking and writing. I appreciate it immensely.

It’s nice to see you join in the conversation, Corbett. Your contribution is well-written, Biblically-saturated, and intriguing. Your view seems closer to the traditional amillennial position, but you reminded me of some strong points of the position.

NP

In regards to this article, I too am growing increasingly suspicious of views which relegate the Kingdom of God to a static point in the future and create the need for multiple resurrections among other questionable inferences. This is a big topic and one that it is easy to run from (and justify our neglect on the basis of the over attention eschatology tends to enjoy in certain schools of thought). Thanks so much for helping bring clarity to this confusing but glorious subject.

Your general eschatological optimism was overall refreshing, but I was glad to see your qualifications in the addendum. We have to admit that the increase of apostasy and tribulation is no small theme in Scripture. Your interpretation of I Tim. 4:1-3 was plausible, but other texts beg to be answered (II Thess. 2:3-12; Luke 18:8; 21:25-28; Rev. 13; Matt. 26:4-14…). That all of these could refer to the happenings of A.D. 70 or Medieval Catholicism strictly is to this brother unlikely.

Then there is the testimony of history. This century opened with more countries engaged in civil war than at any point in history. Famine, disease and terror are rampant. The 20th century witnessed the martyrdom of more Christians than all previous centuries back to Christ combined. Islam is gaining footholds across the globe. The “visible� church is plagued with apostasies and relativistic ideology. On this continent, we have experienced quite a moral decay since the days when Jonathan Edwards predicted Northampton, MA as the locus of the arrival of the Kingdom of God. It is no co-incidence that post-millennialism lost significant adherence with the advent of the World Wars. All of this while Christ reigns on the throne of David in the heavenly Jerusalem in fulfillment of Kingdom promise (Acts 2:22-26).

While you have demonstrated well the expectation of the prophets, apostles and Christ that the kingdom will engulf the earth gradually and progressively, other parables predict the growth of tares alongside the wheat (Matt. 13:24-30), and rotten fish alongside the edible (47-50) to the degree that it is necessary for Christ Himself to come and sort out the mess by crushing the children of Satan and vindicating the children of the Kingdom (2 Thess.1:5-12). In apparent sync with these prophesies, the history of the Church is far more glad and victorious than the broader history of mankind. I don’t know that our optimism concerning the progress of the Kingdom of heaven in this age would be at all violated by the anticipation of a contemporaneous increase in wickedness and disease in the kingdom of this world which she operates inside of.

Additionally, Scripture seems to teach that the return of Christ is impending (probably better than “imminentâ€? – Mt. 24:48; Heb. 10:37; Rev. 16:15, etc.), and for me, amillennialism, with its more ambiguous interpretations of pre-parousia happenings, best accommodates this theme.

Finally, your call to global missions, cemented in the immutable victory purchased by Christ, was inspiring (weak word, I know). May the Lamb receive the sure reward of His sufferings from among all peoples and tongues and extend His kingdom on earth through the frail and foolish means of our gospel proclamations forever mingled with a fellowship in the sufferings of Christ at the hands of the Kingdom of this world!

Anyways, by no means do I want to interupt your highly useful dialogue with Pittsley, but thought I’d check in with a hearty thank you for taking the time to create these literary windows into your brain. SDG.

1.) Dispensationalism led me to a Kierkegaardian conception of faith.

I adduce this danger as one having suffered from it personally. I was always taught that, although salvation was always by faith alone, the content of that faith differed in other dispensations (The position which Ryrie clearly espouses). The way this was presented to me (and the way I understood and believed it) was that, essentially, Noah was saved by believing it would rain. And so on. In other words, it was not faith in Christ alone, but faith with respect only to itself that saved a person (and similarly, even today the abstraction “faith” has some mystical eternal life-giving power in itself). Obviously this conception of faith is somewhat Kierkegaardian, but I am convinced it affects the minds of far more evangelicals than we would like to admit. Faith itself is nothing, it only turns our eyes to someone who is everything. Dispensationalism taught me that faith was what saved, and not that faith was the means through which Christ saved. Regardless of how else we may differ on Acts 2 interpretations of OT prophecies, I think we would both admit that Peter was quite confident that David had a faith which looked ahead to a resurrected Christ, as did all the OT saints. The genuinely Christocentric nature of faith and salvation from the beginning is obscured (dangerously) by dispensationalism.

2.) Dispensationalism was destructive to my ability to grasp the unity and significance of the biblical story.

For instance, when I was a dispensationalist, the Davidic Covenant was of almost no import whatsoever to me. It revealed God’s gracious condescencion to mankind, as did, for instance, his promise to Hezekiah that he would live fifteen more years, and so on. But as far as structuring the biblical story, I saw nothing monumental in it. I thought the bible was structured in “dispensations,” and the giving of the covenant did not mark a new administration essentially different from that of “law”. When I forsook dispensationalism, I was shocked by how central that covenant was in the writing prophets particularly in advancing the eternal kingdom of God. And I was much better equipped to make sense of Acts 2 (again) and Christ’s reigning from the throne of David in the New Testament. In brief, the grand, Christ-centered, organically-connected, unified story of redemption and the spread of the kingdom was for me split into several inter-related, but not organically progressing, periods. And in the process the glory of Christ and his grand drama of redemption was dangerously eclipsed. In the exchange, by the way, the stories of the OT became “Aesop’s fables,” tales that contain a moral for upright living, but have no real connection to me, and no real glorying in Christ alone, and no real awe-struck wondering at how the story of redemption was unfolding until it reached its height of glory in the spiritual realities of the New Testament that were promised and typified and illustrated and yearned for in the Old Testament, much as a mustard tree growing until it is the greatest of all the herbs, and excels in the glory which inhered in its seed from the beginning.

3.) Dispensationalism tainted my mindset with leanings towards Arminianism.

This particularly with regard to the dispensational teaching of the offering of the kingdom. What is more absurd than the idea of a king “offering” to reign? This whole mindset of a God who is “sovereign” by invitation only – who reigns unless he is rejected – strikes me as fundamentally Arminian. Again, I know that you are not in any way Arminian – but I believe that Armninianism is consonant with dispensationalism, and the largely Arminian worldview of many christians is reinforced by dispensational teaching. Let me add here, dispensationalism contributed to my blind acceptance of the philosophy of easy-believism. If Christ was only teaching that we must give up everything to follow him into some crassly physical thousand year reign, then eternal salvation (in my mind something wholly distinct) might well have had other demands. Simply faith which was ultimately Kierkegaardian, and demanded no accepting of Christ as “lord,” became the abstraction by which I assured myself of eternal life, with no regard for the persevering work of Christ continuing in my life.

4.) Dispensationalism (as it was taught to me) embraces a horrendously insufficient view of the new covenant in Christ’s blood.

I have had more than one well-respected dispensationalist (in our old stomping grounds) try to convince me that the new covenant in Christ’s blood has nothing to do with us. Because (forget the four gospel accounts, 1 Cor. 11, Heb 8,10, etc.) the new covenant was prophecied for “Israel” which can never be anything other than ethnic Israel (forget also what Paul said about a true Jew being one who is a Jew inwardly). So how does the blood of Christ affect us, the church (as distinct from the rest of the redeemd)? We get, (and I quote) “peripheral benefits” of Christ’s blood. I consider this blasphemy, and although I do not believe that you hold to this assessment (on the contrary, your comments have apprised me otherwise), yet I think this position is one that is ultimately demanded by the dispensational way of reading OT prophecies.

5.) Dispensationalism (as it was taught to me) embraces what must be considered a blasphemous idea of a return to a system of priests and sacrifices of bulls and goats.

The author of Hebrews leaves me no doubt that any return to priests other than Christ or any spilling of sacrificial blood now that Christ’s has been spilled, can be nothing other than blasphemy. But this is precisely what has been taught to me by well-respected dispensationalists (in our old circles).

6.) Dispensationalism tends toward a real ethnocentrism as regards Israel (which springs from a veiled materialism).

I used to think that America’s allying herself with Israel, regardless of the political situation and Israel’s justice or injustice at the time, would unconditionally result in blessings from God. This thinking did not come isolated from my dispensationally-flavored world view. Where did this whole mode of thinking come from? In embracing old types and shadows to the minimization of the spiritual realities that they were meant to convey. The vast extent of NT teachings on the church loving and caring for each other must be a truer response to the status of “Israel” as God’s chosen people than the modern cult of red-heifer hopefuls displaying a racist favoritism toward a particular ethnic group.

7.) In summary, dispensationalism tends to downplay the Christocentric nature of all reality.

If some of these other things are true – if faith, not the object or “content” of that faith is what is important – and if the physical offspring of Abraham, not those who are in Christ, the true seed of Abraham, are God’s chosen people – and if a physical Jewish millennium, not Christ’s spiritual reign over the entire earth is the goal of human history, and so on – if all these things are true, then the extent of Christocentrism must be limited (dangerously). This is my biggest problem with dispensationalism.

I want to reaffirm that I am not accusing you of believing any of these things specifically, or of teaching anything which you suppose may detract from the glory of Christ. But I am observing that these results are very real and very extreme in many dispensationalists I have known (In myself when I was a dispensationalist). And I don’t think it’s because all of those affected misunderstood what dispensationalism really is. I think it’s because the very schema of dispensationalism lends itself to these conclusions.

Please don’t doubt my sincere love for you in the bonds of our precious Savior, Jesus Christ. If these things I have written are not true, show me (scripturally) how they are not, and I will, to that extent, modify my position.

In Christ,

NP

I understand that you think my teaching is dangerous, but I am at a loss as to what makes it so.

I am Trinitarian according to the 1689 Baptist Confession. I believe in inerrancy as explained by Warfield. I believe in the substitutionary death and physical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. I believe in the resurrection of all the saints to glory, and in the just, eternal, conscious torment of all the damned. I teach Sola Scriptura, Solus Christus, Sola fide, Sola Gracia, Sola Deo Gloria, total depravity (and inability), unconditional (individual) election, particular redemption (as generally expressed by Grudem), irresistible grace (and the priority of regeneration to conversion), and perseverance of the saints (including the Reformed view of sanctification as presented in 1689 Baptist Confession and Sinclair Ferguson’s essay in the five-views book). Though those in the Reformed camp have traditionally disagreed on apologetics (Warfield vs. Kuyper; Clark vs. Van Til; Sproul vs. Bahnsen), I am, as you are, presuppositional in my apologetic, understanding the Christian worldview to provide the only reasonable basis for knowledge, ethics, morality, and brushing one’s teeth. I fail to see how a distinction between the eschatological roles of true Israel and the true Church puts any of these doctrines in danger. While other dispensationalists may not be as conservative on these things as I am, they made up a strong contingent of conservative, Bible-believing Christians in America of the twentieth century.

As Fitz said, eschatology is a difficult subject, but it is worth our study. Your change in position implies that you agree with me on both counts. I understand that you passionately believe what you have stated; I too passionately believe what I have stated elsewhere on this forum. That means that we both think the other person is dead wrong. Nonetheless, patience with one another is essential to forwarding the conversation, and, in my view, calling one another “dangerous” should be somewhat further down the road of disagreement.

Thank you for this “short article.”