Need Help With End Times
Okay. I’m loving the podcast! Thanks so much for your work!
Question: The new covenant is new to me. I’m researching to understand what the new covenant is and how they view the “end times” as we were taught in Adventism but coming up dry—with no real answers.
Any thoughts on this or resources for me?
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thanks for writing! First, the formal system named “New Covenant Theology” tends to have the same view of eschatology that Reformed, or covenant theology, has. They tend to believe that the church is the inheritor of God’s blessings promised to Israel, and that Israel is not going to figure as an independent identity again.
However, we understand Scripture to be saying something more nearly like the position held by progressive dispensationalism. Did you read the article in Friday’s Proclamation! email? It describes our understanding of what the Bible says about a future for Israel. Nevertheless, people who understand eschatology differently from us are still true believers. Eschatology is considered a secondary issue. The gospel and the inerrancy of Scripture is central to faith; people understand eschatology differently.
Nevertheless, the hermeneutic one uses to read Scripture really affects how one understands eschatology. As you know from the podcast, we believe the words mean what the words say. Context is everything, and we have to use normal rules of grammar and vocabulary as we read. The first audience’s understanding is never abandoned, even though application may change with time. All to say, we believe that the millennium described in Revelation 20 will occur just as Revelation states: after the events of the tribulation but before the final Armageddon that will end with the judgment and the descent of the New Jerusalem and the new heavens and earth.
My personal advice is this: read Scripture in context and don’t expect any particular website to explain the way to understand it. The hermeneutic we use has much to do with what we understand about eschatology. Reading the Bible in the normal way one would read any book—reading in context, starting with the first audience’s understanding of the passage, and using normal rules of grammar and vocabulary—is the way to most accurately assess the meaning of the text. To use a hermeneutic that allegorizes Scripture or forces typology onto passages that are simply historic accounts changes the meaning of the passages. After having to disentangle myself from my Adventist worldview, however, I have concluded that the most reliable, stable source of authority I have is the Bible, and I must read it submitted to its words and its grammar. Reading that way is the classic way to read any book—and the Bible is God’s word to us.
I will paste below something our pastor wrote to me about this subject several years ago when I asked for his clarification:
The issue of the future of Israel is, as you’ve discovered, one that is hotly debated, and I can hardly deal with it extensively. But there are several things to note.
- The connection of the issue with dispensationalism is a red herring. While dispensationalists certainly believe in a restoration of national Israel, the idea certainly didn’t originate with them. Postmillennialists such as Jonathan Edwards were speaking of such a thing a hundred years before. Premillennialism has a far more ancient heritage than that.
- The entire issue is tinged with a sad history of anti-Semitism on the part of the Christian church, that has roots back into the early church. The Jewish rejection of Christ, the Jewish revolt in the second century and the desire of early Christians to distance themselves from the Jewish people led to a spiritualizing and de-Judaizing of the Biblical record. Sadly, this led to replacement theology and a “supercessionist” viewpoint (the church gets Israel’s blessings; they get to keep the curses) which bedeviled “Christian” theology down through the centuries. Much of what was done by Christians to Jews was utterly shameful.
- The modern secular nation of Israel remains in a state of unbelief and rebellion against God, just as the United States, Canada, and all nations do. The time of national salvation has not come. That means that Christians cannot and ought not mindlessly defend Israel’s actions. But the reemergence of the nation after 1900 years of dispersion is a remarkable event, especially in the light of OT promises, that it is foolish to deny.
- It is well and good to be suspicious of the novel. However, the ultimate question must be, Is it biblical? After all, some of those who most ardently profess the novelty of dispensationalism ardently defend the Reformation or Reformed theology, which are only 250 years earlier. The fact is, as James Orr showed in a book called The Progress of Dogma, certainly issues have come to the forefront in Christian history at different points in history. So the deity of Christ and the Trinity were of central importance in the early centuries, and then concern shifted to the nature of the person of Christ (what did it mean that he was God and man). Issues of the nature of the church formed the next period (with sad conclusions), and soteriology came to the fore during the Reformation. Eschatology wasn’t on the front burners for most until the 18th and 19th centuries.
All this being said, the most important thing for any of us is to believe in the Lord Jesus and to trust His finished work. Eschatology is not an issue over which believers should divide; people can have differing views of eschatology and be true brothers and sisters in Christ. God will teach us as we trust His word, and He will accomplish His purposes. He is faithful to Himself!
Thank you
I’m just so very thankful for your missionary activity with this worldwide group. What an immense blessing to all of us.
—VIA EMAIL
Jesus Is Not an Archangel
God bless you all for your efforts to win the lost to Christ for their salvation and rest and peace in Him.
At times when l am listening to your podcasts l recall past studies with Jehovah’s Witnesses and the similarity of their logic to the Adventists’ arguments.
But when they have come to Christ, the Holy Spirit opens their eyes, too. One couple had thought Jesus was the Michael the Archangel of 1 Thessalonians 4:16. When they read the text more carefully, “He is coming with the voice of the Archangel and with the Trump of God”, we asked them, “ls Jesus also a Trumpet?” They broke out into a hilarious laugh and responded, “Of course not! That’s not logical.”
Then we responded, “So neither can He be the Archangel just because that angel’s voice is heard when He comes for His church.”
These new Christians caught the false logic that had trapped them.
When we tell Adventists that we are free in Christ, they often ask, “Free from what?”
They don’t expect the answer, “There is now no condemnation…for the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ has set me [us] free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:1-4).
Sometimes the answers for Adventists help Jehovah’s Witnesses and other cults as well.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you for reminding us of the fact that cults share a wrong understanding of the identity and nature of the Lord Jesus! While their false Christs may be described differently, they are not the Jesus of the Bible. Thanks for sharing some ways you help people to “see”.
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