Featured Kingdom Theology

Jesus preached premil though!

 

I do not understand the purpose of "the millennium" (a temporary state before judgment?").


Joel 2:28 NKJV
“And it shall come to pass afterward
That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your old men shall dream dreams,
Your young men shall see visions.

When do you think afterward, is?
Does, "all," mean all?

Acts 15:8 NKJV
“So God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He did to us,
Are those, "them," and, "us," "all," or they the ones having the first-fruit of the Spirit as in Romans 8:23?

What is the purpose of the, "millennium,"?

Ezek 21:27
I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him.

I believe, "it," to be the throne, the house of David.

Acts 15:16 NLT
‘Afterward I will return --- Afterward what? After taking out a people for his name to rule with Christ?
and restore the fallen house[fn] of David. --- fn - 15:16 Or kingdom; Greek reads tent.
I will rebuild its ruins
and restore it,

Why? Where will Satan the devil be prior to the, "millennium," according to the word of God?

Acts 15:17
That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.

That is the purpose. Can they seek without being given the Holy Spirit? Can they call him Lord without being given the Holy Spirit?

1 Cor 12:3 NKJV
Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

 

They were historical premil

 

Does this sound like premil to you?... Brother Glen

John 14:1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

14:2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

Where Jesus Christ is NOW!... That's where I'm going because the LORD said so!

 

This isn't my idea. Scholars of eschatology of all positions universally teach this.

A grammatical-historical hermeneutic will always, without fail, lead to premillennialism. Therefore, we would suppose that the early churches, operating before allegorical interpretation entered the church, would have been premillennial, and so they were.

“It is generally agreed that the view of the church for the centuries immediately following the Apostolic era was the premillennial view of the return of Christ” (J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come, p. 373.) There is plenty of evidence that the early church fathers, the pastors of the early centuries, all held to a premillennial doctrine of the Second Coming. Here are quotes proving their premillennialism.

Papias of Hieropolis recorded in Irenaeus and Eusebius as holding to “a thousand year period” of blessing.

Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, 80-81, “I and others, who are right-minded Christians on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged, as the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare.” And he specifically links all this to the book of Revelation.

Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5.30.4, “But when this Antichrist shall have devastated all things in this world, he will reign for three years and six months, and sit in the temple at Jerusalem; and then the Lord will come from heaven in the clouds, in the glory of the Father, sending this man and those who follow him into the lake of fire; but bringing in for the righteous the times of the kingdom, that is, the rest, the hallowed seventh day; and restoring to Abraham the promised inheritance.”

Tertullian, 160-220 AD, Against Marcion, 3.24, “But we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another state of existence; inasmuch as it will be after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely-built city of Jerusalem, ‘let down from heaven,’ which the apostle also calls ‘our mother from above;’ and, while declaring that our citizenship is in heaven, he predicates of it that it is really a city in heaven. This both Ezekiel had knowledge of and the Apostle John beheld.”

The first major opponent to premillennial thinking was Clement of Alexandria (150-215), with the beginnings of an emphasis on allegorical interpretation (from Philo).

It is not until Augustine in the fifth century that we have the first actual opposition of the premillennial position in favor of a systematic, thought-out system of a-millennialism: “This opinion [future pre-mil] might be allowed, if it purposed only spiritual delight unto the saints during this space (and we were once of the same opinion ourselves); but seeing the avouchers hereof affirm that the saints after this resurrection shall do nothing but revel in fleshly banquets, where the cheer shall exceed both modesty and measure, this is gross and fit for none but carnal men to believe. But they that are really and truly spiritual do call those of this opinion Chiliasts.” So then, in City of God, Augustine argues that the “millennium” was actually “the history of the Church on earth.” (City of God, 20.7, early 5th century).

 

That's premil, brother. He is now preparing a place for us (the New Jerusalem) and will come and get us. Very premil.

 

You are not paying attention. Again I'll say it: premillennialists believe that the Kingdom of God was/is immaterial (in the heart), but the Davidic Kingdom (the kingdom of the millennium) is physical. Christ will physically reign on the throne of David in the millennium. You are lumping all of these mentions together, but a list of verses proves nothing, as has often been pointed out on the BB. You have to exegete. Some of these verses refer to a physical kingdom and some to the "Kingdom of God." Chiliasts do not conflate the two.

 

I am a premillennialist, and I do not believe "that the Kingdom of God was/is [only] immaterial (in the heart) . . . ."

God is the eternal King of everything, including all of the material universe (Ps. 103:19; Ps. 145:13; Dan. 4:34). That sense of the kingdom of God is all-encompassing, eternal, and unchanging.

So a fully biblical understanding about all that Scripture reveals about the kingdom of God includes at least distinguishing among the passages that speak of the eternal kingdom, the spiritual kingdom, and the Davidic/millennial kingdom.

 

Be more specific. Dispensationalists chop up God's work into many parts and then try to force God into those pieces.
It is clear in scripture that the Kingdom has always been from eternity and it will continue into eternity. No dual kingdoms. We see Jesus in Genesis 1 (connected with John 1). We see Jesus in Joshua 5:14 as the commander of the Lord's Army. This is again expressed in Isaiah 25:6-9 in the feast at the table as it connects with Hebrews 12:22.
All believers are presently Kingdom citizens living in a foreign land as ambassadors of reconciliation.
The Kingdom is now.

 

Why did the Pharisees reject the gospel of the kingdom? Because their's is physical. one of sight. And Jesus' kingdom is of faith. That only the born-again can see.

 

Well, I'm sure you're right. It's a complicated study, and I haven't done it in many years, so I appreciate this contribution. Fortunately, I didn't use the word "only" in my post.

 

The Pharisees and Chief Priests rejected Jesus for many reasons but mainly because it would have stripped them of their social and political power. This was unacceptable to them. But of course all of this was predicted in the OT. Even before the Israelites entered the Promised Land, Moses told them that as soon as he died, they would become utterly corrupt and continue to be corrupt until the latter days. Deut 31:29

This concept, that Jehovah knew that the Jews would reject Jesus at His first coming makes covenant theology quite doubtful.

 

Well, again, you are not interacting with my position on the millennium being the Davidic Kingdom. Perhaps you can't.

Now, you seem to be saying, "Immaterial = good, but physical = bad." Surely you are not doing that, right? That would be similar to Gnosticism, which taught that all matter was evil.

The millennial kingdom will be physical, but Jesus is physical, is he not? Or, as a full preterist (I think you said that at one point), do you believe that Jesus is no longer physical? There is only one other full preterist on the BB as far as I know, and he recently continually ignored my request that he tell us when Jesus lost His physical, resurrection body. That would be a reverse of the Incarnation, and a major, major event. Yet it never appears in Scripture.

 

Um, no, we don't.

What, King Jesus can't have two crowns? Many kings in history have ruled over more than one kingdom. Jesus is king of the Kingdom of God, and in fulfillment of prophecy He will sit on the Davidic throne. That has been prophesied over and over in the Scriptures.

The Jews all understood this. Mark 11:10--"Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest."

 

Agree! ...and welcome to the BB.

 

I believe a motif in the scriptures is that the Church is it's embassy and we are it's ambassadors (among many other 'motifs').

 

You show your dispensationalism, which is why you cannot accept that Jesus is King...period. He's not just relegated to a tiny, rather insignificant kingdom in the Middle East. Jesus was born in the line of David according to the promise, but Jesus has always been a person whom David bowed to and called Jesus...LORD.

It is this silly twisting and wild attempts to connect that moved me away from dispensationalism. It's just such a disconnected attempt to label every tree that it misses the forest entirely.

 

Their premil would be historical, not the pre trib rapture view, and Augustine view became the dominant one afterwards due to the Catholic Church making the Kingdom same as the Church of Rome!

 

Welcome to BB, Stephen. I am always glad to meet another full preterist. There are a lot of decent folks here from a whole spectrum of "isms". I hope you feel welcome here.

 

The Messianic Age as foretold by the OT prophets would have an earthly kingdom and a King reigning!