Dispensationalism (again)

All Christians believe that the Lord will come again. We don't all agree on what that will look like. Where I live, Christians appear to be divided into two groups: the convinced Postmillennialists, and those with no real conviction on the issue. 

It seems to me that the majority view in the 70s and 80s when I was growing up was a Dispensationalist Premillennialist view, but that may have been more a reflection of where I was than of the time itself.

I remain convinced of the Dispensationalist Premillennialist view, and I think it might be useful to explain some of the reasoning behind that. To be clear, I'm not trying to convince anyone else, merely to explain what convinces me.

It seems to me that we can learn a great deal about the Lord's return by looking at His first coming. That was paradoxically a strictly literal fulfillment of prophecy that looked nothing like what people expected. 

When the wise men came to Herod to learn where Christ had been born, the "chief priests and scribes" were able to predict exactly where He had been born based on "the prophet" (Micah 5:2, Matthew 2:1–6). The prophet had said He would come from Bethlehem Ephratah, and the chief priests and scribes took that as a literal reference to a literal place. And, of course, they were right. 

At the same time, the story continues on to say that His parents were told to flee to Egypt; and this, too, was fulfillment of prophecy (Hosea 11:1, Matthew 2:13–15). So we have two prophecies that are both fulfilled literally,  perhaps not in a way that we'd have expected: the Son of God was born in Bethlehem, but came out of Egypt.

Matthew's and Luke's genealogies of  the Lord both run through David, but through two different sons (Matthew 1:1–16, Luke 3:23–38). I take Matthew's record to be the "legal" genealogy through the Lord's adoptive father Joseph, while Luke's is the "biological" genealogy through the Lord's mother Mary. (I realize not everyone agrees on that point.) Again, the prophets had predicted that the Lord would be the "Son of David," the Branch out of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1–5),  and that was fulfilled literally. The pharisees admitted they were looking for David's Son (Matthew 22:41–46).

After the Lord's resurrection, after He had spent six weeks with the disciples, they asked Him, "Lord, is it at this time that thou restorest the kingdom to Israel? " (Acts 1:6–9). This question reveals that the disciples were aware there were large chunks of Old Testament prophecy about the coming of the Lord that hadn't [yet] been fulfilled. And the Lord's answer is oblique: "It is not yours to know times or seasons, which the Father has placed in his own authority, " but they would receive power when the Holy Spirit had come upon them (Acts 1:7–8).

I draw several inferences from these verses. First, the Lord's first coming was a literal fulfillment of prophecy. He was born in Bethlehem. He came out of Egypt. The prophets named these specific places, and those prophecies were fulfilled literally. Now, it's true that it would have been difficult for us to predict just how that fulfillment would work out, but there's no question that it was fulfilled literally.

Second, the Lord's genealogies both literally run through David. There is no sense in the Gospels that David is used symbolically or "spiritually" to describe the Lord. He is literally David's descendant.  Again, it might be been difficult for us to predict Luke's genealogy beforehand, but there's no question it is a literal fulfillment.

Third, the Old Testament prophecies are to be fulfilled in more than one coming. Now, I realize that not everyone will understand Acts 1:1–9 the way I do. I expect some Postmillennialists or Amillennialists would point out that the Lord doesn't actually say, "I'm going to restore the kingdom to Israel when I come back." Indeed, they likely see the promise of the disciples receiving power after the coming of the Holy Spirit as the prediction that the coming kingdom would be through them. Let's address that shortly. Let's just say at the moment that as of Acts 1:6, the disciples expected the Lord to do a good deal more, and were wondering when (not if) He would do it.

I take the Lord's answer in Acts 1:7–8 to mean that He will, indeed, restore the kingdom to Israel, but it's not their (our) place to know God's timing. Rather, the Holy Spirit's descent will bring power to equip us for the tasks He has for us until He comes back to restore the kingdom. 

I think Acts 3:19–21 clarifies Acts 1:6ff. In Acts 3, Peter urges the Jews to repent, promising that God would send Jesus Christ and "times of refreshing" if only they'd repent. Of course they did not. Notice how this parallels Daniel's prediction that the Son of Man would descend with clouds to receive a kingdom (Daniel 7:13–14). What Peter is describing here is a literal kingdom involving the physical return of Christ at the outset, and it was available to them immediately.

We notice that the disciples' expectation was that the Lord would restore the kingdom to Israel. Maybe that's worth a lot more digging, but I want to keep on the main point for now...

From the perspective of the Old Testament prophets, the Lord's coming was one event. From the perspective of the disciples in Acts 1, it would be split into two. To me this entirely justifies the Dispensationalist view that we expect the Lord to come again for His saints, and them to come again with His saints. In other words, I have no problem with a "secret rapture," because we know already that what the Old Testament prophets saw as a single event was at least two, separated by at least two thousand years. I have no trouble accepting that this second coming would itself be split in two.

Again, I am not in any way trying to convince anyone else. I am merely outlining what convinces me. I see that the Lord's first coming was marked by literal fulfillment of prophecies: He was born in the exact geographical place Micah named, He was born to the physical descendant of David. I see no reason not to expect His coming again will be fulfilled just as literally: I expect Him to stand on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:1–4). I expect Him to come from Edom (Isaiah 63:1). I expect Him to come down to Armageddon (Revelation 16:16, Revelation 19:11ff). I expect those three prophecies will be worked out in a way that's as obvious in retrospect as the Bethlehem/Egypt prophecies were worked out the first time He came.

I'm expecting that the Lord will gather up all twelve tribes of Israel, and return them to the land. And I expect He will make the New Covenant with them when Ephraim repents (Jeremiah 31:31ff, Ezekiel 36:24ff, Hosea 14:4ff). I expect all this will be fulfilled just as literally as His first coming fulfilled Old Testament prophecy.

 

Looking for another country

I'm still half-way through Calvin's Institutes, having been reading it now for several years. That's not as atypical of my reading habits as I'd like to believe.

I was struck by Calvin's comments on the hopes of the patriarchs, and have been contemplating them for several years:

If these holy Patriarchs expected a happy life from the hand of God (and it is indubitable that they did), they viewed and contemplated a different happiness from that of a terrestrial life. This is admirably shown by an Apostle, “By faith he [Abraham] sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he has prepared for them a city,” (Heb. 11:9, 10, 13–16). They had been duller than blocks in so pertinaciously pursuing promises, no hope of which appeared upon the earth, if they had not expected their completion elsewhere. (Institutes, Book 2, Chapter 10)

That caught my eye, because I have heard some well-known Dispensationalists claim that the hopes of the Old Testament saints were for this life, while the hopes of the Christian are for the next. "Israel's blessings were physical, ours are spiritual." But it's not that simple, is it?  Hebrews 11:9–16 explicitly and specifically contradicts it. Hebrews claims that Abraham and Sarah were both looking for blessings beyond the physical.

Now, I realize there is a lot of nuance I'm ignoring here. Maybe the case could be made that Abraham isn't Israel per se. Perhaps we might want to distinguish between the patriarchs and the nation that came from them.  But even that seems problematic in the light of Hebrews 11:32–40.

Those verses intrigue me, because there is a shift in tone right at the start of v. 35. In that verse, the tone pivots from miraculous deliverance (by faith),  to faith under persecution. Suddenly we go from those whose faith was vindicated in this life to those who still await vindication. And we're told, "these all... did not receive the promise... that they should not be made perfect without us" (Hebrews 11:39–40). 

So no, we can't just say that their hope was for this life, while ours is for the next. By that reasoning, virtually all the prophets were faithless: "which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?" (Acts 7:52).  Either all the prophets were wicked sinners, or blessing in this life wasn't a measure of faith, even in the Old Testament.

Now, I'm not trying to kick at Dispensationalists here. I think Dispensationalism is essentially correct. I am merely pointing out that scripture doesn't support some of the conclusions we draw from it.

When I started reading Darby, one of the immediate effects was that I became much less of a Dispensationalist. I had so thoroughly bought into Dispensationalism, I was determined to see as many differences between the Old Testament and the New as I could. But reading Darby forced me to see there is a great deal of continuity between the Old Testament and the New: it's not all contrasts! The central figure is that same in both, and He doesn't change.

There are genuine differences between the Old Testament saints and us today. We are united to Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection; they were not. The Holy Spirit has been given by the risen, ascended, glorified Christ to us in an entirely new way from His dealings with them in the Old. 

Those differences are there, and they are real.

But we have to return to this point again and again: the Word of God is perfect, my understanding of it is not.