Why Every Calvinist Should Be a Premillennialist, #1
Why Every Calvinist Should Be a Premillennialist, #2
Why Every Calvinist Should Be a Premillennialist, #3
Why Every Calvinist Should Be a Premillennialist, #4
Why Every Calvinist Should Be a Premillennialist, #5
Why Every Calvinist Should Be a Premillennialist, #6
these sermons are responded to here;
Riddleblog - A Reply to John MacArthur
Understanding the difference between the amillennial hermeneutic and the dispensational hermeneutic is the key to understanding the essence of this debate. Every major dispensational theologian from Walvoord to Pentecost to Ryrie to MacArthur himself, insists that God has two distinct redemptive programs–one for national Israel and one for the Gentiles. MacArthur clearly affirms this dispensational presupposition in the quote above.
Reformed amillennarians reject this understanding of God's redemptive purposes. God’s purpose is not to save two distinct peoples (divided by ethnicity), but to save his people (the elect), a multitude which no man can number (Revelation 7:9), and which includes each and every one of those whom God has chosen, whether they be Jew or Gentile.
In Ephesians 2:11-22, Paul addresses this very point when discussing God’s redemptive purpose for Gentiles and national Israel. Here, Paul flat-out contradicts the dispensational assertion that God has distinct redemptive purposes for national Israel and for the church. According Paul, God’s purpose in the New Covenant is to remove the ethnic distinctions between Jew and Gentile (between Israel and the church) which had been dividing them. Paul says that Jesus came to tear down the barrier wall which formerly divided the two, in order to make the two peoples into one so as to form Jew and Gentile together into the one living temple of the Lord–the church. In this spiritual temple, Christ is the chief cornerstone, and the foundation is the prophets and apostles.
While dispensationalists will concede that this is God’s purpose for the present age, they say Israel’s distinct role resurfaces again after the Rapture when the Gentile church is removed from the earth. This dual redemptive purpose then carries on throughout the millennial age after Christ comes back. If true, this means that it is Christ’s purpose to make the two peoples one is only temporary. God intends to divide Israel (ethnic Jews) again from the Gentiles after the resurrection (1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11).
Of course, this makes no sense whatsoever. In fact, such a view forces us to see the future millennial age as something completely distinct from Christ’s redemptive purpose under the New Covenant. On these terms, the as-yet future millennium marks a return to Old Testament types and shadows and ignores the fact that the reality is Christ. This not only means that redemptive history takes a giant U-turn after Christ comes back, amounting to a return to the types and shadows which preceded the coming of the Messiah, but it completely ignores the very thing Christ came to do–make the two peoples one by removing all ethnic divisions which previously divided believers! The progress of redemption takes us from promise (types and shadows) to fulfillment (anti-types), not from promise, to temporary (or transitional) fulfillment, and then finally back to the types and shadows.
This is why a Christ-centered hermeneutic changes everything and why this hermeneutic lies at the heart of the differences between Reformed amillennialism and dispensationalism. As Bob Strimple (the former president of Westminster Seminary California, and now professor emeritus of systematic theology) points out in a lecture he often gives on this very topic, there are a number of reasons why Israel’s role in the Old Testament was preparatory to the coming Christ, and can therefore cannot serve as the hermeneutical center of Scripture. The fact is that Christ comes to fulfill (literally) all of the Old Testament promises, not to temporarily put them aside, only to return to them in a future millennium. Strimple bases his view that Christ is the true Israel on the following biblical arguments:
1). Isaiah’s servant songs have a double referent that has long baffled Jewish commentators. On the one hand, they refer to Israel, God’s chosen one and servant (41:8-9; 44:1-2, 21; 45:4; 49:3). On the other, they seem also to refer to some individual (42:1-4). These prophesies are interpreted by the New Testament as referring to Christ (Matthew 8:17 and Acts 8:30-35)
2). Matthew sees a double referent in Hosea 11:1, ("Out of Egypt I called my son")
3). Paul identifies Christ, not physical Israel, as Abraham’s seed (Galatians 3:16). Galatians 3:7 and Romans 4:11, 16, moreover, identify the church as Abraham’s offspring.
4). Henceforth, we are in Christ the true Israel: Galatians 3:26-29, Romans 2:28-29, and Philippians 3:3.
5). The Old Covenant is obsolete, having been superseded by the New: Hebrews 8:8-12 identifies the new covenant with Israel (Jeremiah 31:33-34) with the covenant instituted by Christ with the church. Most importantly, Hebrews 8:13 declares the old covenant obsolete and passing away. This makes impossible the dispensational view of Ezekiel 40-48 as a reinstitution of temple sacrifice.
6). The upshot is that the Old Testament did not see how its own prophesies were to be fulfilled - indeed, it could not prior to Christ. The New Testament authors were able to interpret the Old Testament in the light of His coming of the new covenant that He instituted. So should we.
As Strimple points out, this means that Jesus is the true Israel, and that all Scripture–especially its prophetic sections–must be read through a Christ-centered hermeneutic, not a dispensational one which centers upon national Israel.
In his lecture, MacArthur makes the point that since God elects Israel, and since “Israel means Israel,” any other approach to eschatology destroys the perspicuity of the Old Testament. Yes, Dr. MacArthur is right that Israel always means Israel, but that’s not the point.
When the writers of the New Testament see Israel in the light of the coming of Jesus Christ, they now see that the nation of Israel and the Sinaitic covenant which established it, were intended by God to point ahead to the coming of Jesus. That’s what Paul is getting at in Galatians 3:19-25, when he speaks of the law as intended by God to prepare the way for the coming of Christ. This is because the law exposes our sin and like a school-master drives us to Christ.
But this truth was largely hidden in the types and shadows of the Old Testament era in redemptive history because Christ had not yet come and the ultimate purpose of the law could not yet be seen. But this same truth is impossible to escape after Jesus steps out of type and shadow onto the center stage of redemption (Galatians 4:4-5). It Jesus who now tells us the true purpose of the Old Covenant–“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me" (John 5:39). This is not amillennial "spiritualizing" of Scripture, it is the method of biblical
Short Response to Dr. MacArthur's Comment on Amillennialism | Monergism
