My friend Tunji has posted a criticism which I accept and will be acting upon.   He asked, “Are you about to conclude the end-time series anytime soon?  I probably speak for a number of bloggers here in looking forward to participating on another topic!”  Though I could write another 20 or so posts on this subject I think Tunji is right, it is time to move on to other topics.  

There are many reasons for this.   The main reason is that I have been dealing with some other issues lately, and these concerns have drained me so that I find I have very little time or strength left to think about anything else.  In fact, I barely have enough mental energy left to get my weekly sermon prepared and as of late I have not been doing a very good of doing that.   What I am saying is that I have not had the luxury of being able to reflect much on the end-time series and even less to add new posts.  So though I hate to leave yet another unfinished series, I agree that it is time to move on.  I will also be avoiding these sorts of lengthy threads in the future.

I am planning on posting a new article later this week.  Also, we are about ready to begin a live internet broadcast version of An Honest Debate.  We will be putting a link up and posting the time for the broadcast as soon as we can, possibly as soon as tomorrow.    

We do not have all of the equipment we need to make it a live call in type of program, YET.  But we hope to be getting that equipment soon.   Until then we will try to put together a panel discussion.   If you would like to participate in these early broadcasts you can do so through your emails.  

One of the things I hope to be able to do is to have some real debates.  What I mean by this is, I hope to have some structured debates in which one party will have an uninterrupted period of time to make his or her case.  Following this the other side will be given the same amount of time to the point each party will receive time for a rebuttal.     

One of the reason I like this sort of format is that I hate those television “debates” which are really just arguments.  You know what I’m referring to.  You’ve seen it too, those programs where everyone is interrupting and trying to talk over each other.   What a waste of time.   I prefer a genuine exchange of ideas in that a person has the opportunity to make the best case they can without being interrupted. 

Now there is a danger in this sort of format.  When some people get the floor they are reluctant to give it up.  They attempt to win the debate by never allowing their opponent the opportunity to be heard.  To avoid this we will have strict time limits and a time keeper.  Once a person time runs out they will have 30 seconds to wrap it up.  At that point they will politely yield the floor.

So be watching over the next few days for a new topic and for the time and a link to An Honest Debate Live.

Prophecies of Israel’s exclusion, the inclusion of others, and Israel’s Restoration

In the days leading up to His crucifixion Jesus began to tell parables that predicted the future of His people, Israel.  Among these was a parable about a man who gave a great feast.  When everything was ready the host invited his friends to come to the banquet, but they all made frivolous excuses and refused the invitation.  Disappointed and angered, the host sent his servants out “into the streets and lanes of the city,” to “bring in…the poor and crippled and blind and lame.”  When this failed to fill all of the available space the host sent his servants out again, this time into “the highways and along the hedges,” where they were instructed to “compel whoever they found to come in.”[i] 

Jesus apparently told this parable or a variation of it on several different occasions.[ii]  Its point is obvious.  God was giving Israel an invitation, but Jesus realized that most of the nation would reject the invitation.  Because of this, God was going to invite others to take their place.  Paul explained it this way to the leader of the Jewish community in Rome:

 The Holy Spirit rightly spoke through Isaiah the prophet to your fathers, saying, “Go to this people and say, ‘You will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; For the heart of this people has become dull, and with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their hearts, and understand with their heart and turn     again, and I should heal them.’” Let it be known to you therefore, that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will also listen.[iii]

In Matthew’s account, a king sends out the invitation.  The feast is a celebration of his son’s wedding.  As in Luke’s account, the invited guests make excuses, but in Matthew’s account they also seize, mistreat and kill some of the king’s servants.   In response, the king not only fills his wedding hall with the dregs of society, he sends out his army to destroy and burn the city of the men who mistreated and killed his servants.   This parable was very probably Jesus’ first prediction of the coming destruction of Jerusalem. 

Israel’s great national sin was twofold.  First, the Lord had raised up a prophet like Moses, but they were unwilling to listen to Him.[iv]  The coming of this prophet had been predicted, as had the consequence of refusing to listen to Him:

“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him… It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.”[v] (Emphasis added)

The second great national sin was refusing to accept the Messiah when He came[vi], because “the prophet” was also the long awaited Son of David.

History has shown us the great price the nation of Israel paid for its unwillingness to listen to the prophet like Moses, who God raised up from among them, and for their failure to receive their King when He came.  It was a terrible price indeed, and the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob continue to pay that price to this very hour.  Jesus foresaw all of this.   He took no pleasure in it.  In fact, it drove Him to tears. [vii] It ought to bring tears to our eyes too.    

As a Jewish man, Jesus knew of the curses that Moses said would come upon His people if they were scattered among the nations.  I believe this was part of the reason for his tears.  Let me remind you what Moses said would happen to the people if they were removed from the land and dispersed among the nations:  

 “Moreover, the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth…Among those nations you shall find no rest, and there will be not resting place for the sole of your foot; but there the LORD will give you a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and       despair of soul.  So your life shall hang in doubt before you; and you will be in dread night and day, and shall have no assurance of your life.  In the morning you shall say, ‘Would that it were evening!’  And the evening you shall say, “Would that it were morning!” because of the    dread of your heart which you dread, and for the sigh of your eyes which you will see.”[viii]

What a horribly accurate description of the suffering of the Jewish people over the course of the Christian era.

I have chosen to focus on the Parable of the Wedding Feast rather than other passages which foretell the same events because of the “new” information contained in this parable.  As we have seen, when Jesus began His prophetic ministry[ix] He changed his disciples prophetic timelines by expanding them to include an entire age they had not foreseen.  He then proceeded to give them some information about this “new age.”   He explained that it would be the age during which they would be spreading the Gospel in the world in the same way in which a sower sows seed in his field.  

Jesus made it clear that there would be a visible kingdom of God in the world during the age we are living in, but that kingdom would not be the one His disciples had anticipated.  On the contrary, it would be a kingdom in which the sons of the kingdom existed side by side with the sons of Satan.  Their presence would result in the kingdom being filled with “stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness.”  These things would not be removed until the judgment at the end of the age.   Only then would “the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of the Father.” [x]  How bad would the kingdom become?  As leaven fills a lump of dough, so by the end of the age the kingdom it would be permeated with false teaching.  The herb that was sown in the garden would become a monstrous tree in which Satan himself would finally build his nest. 

As we have seen Jesus began to predict His passion around the same time He began speaking of this “new age”.   But what of Israel, what would happen to the chosen nation which was the visible kingdom at the time Jesus revealed these things?   Like John the Baptist before Him, Jesus foresaw a “baptism of fire.”  In saying these things we hear an echo of the Daniel the prophet, He had predicted the coming of Messiah, and he had predicted His death.  And like Jesus, Daniel had told what would happen after the Messiah was “cut off”:

“The people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined[xi].”  (Emphasis added)

It is interesting that Daniel had a glimpse of the death of the Messiah and this “new age” Jesus was revealing to His disciples.  He did not see the other things Jesus revealed about it.  But he did see, as Jesus did, the destruction of the second temple and subsequent suffering of the Jewish people.  But in the Parable of the Wedding feast we learn something else; we learn that the great ingathering spoken of in the Parables of the Kingdom, like the kingdom itself, would take on an unexpected form.  The chosen nation, having rejected its invitation would be excluded, while others, who would not have been invited under normal circumstances, would now be included. 

This was an unforeseen development, and one that the Disciples did not completely understand.  Jesus spoke of the highway and in the hedges, but it was not until the Gospel began to be proclaimed to the Gentiles that they understood who those folks in the highways and hedges were.  And once they began to be drawn it they were slow to accept them.  God had sent His Son to be the Savior of the world, but the Disciples, Jewish men all, were slow to buy into the full implications of Jesus’ prophetic teaching about the nature of this age.  

Among those who take the scriptures seriously, there is little question that Jesus predicted these things.  But there is serious debate about the finality of these predictions.  Those who would replace Israel with the church believe that Israel’s present state is more or less permanent.  That individual Jewish men and woman can be saved the same as individual gentiles, but that there is no national future for Israel because old Israel had been replaced with a new Israel.

In looking at Jesus’ prophetic teaching it is easy to see why they might come away with this conclusion (though it is clear that the apostles themselves were slow to accept even the conversion of Gentiles), because at first glance Jesus seems to make the rejection of Israel seem somewhat final.  But when we take a closer look we discover that the one Who foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem foresaw another day, the day Isaiah spoke of when Israel’s “warfare has ended and her iniquity has been removed,” after she has “received double for all her sins.” [xii]   

Jesus’ statements about Israel’s ultimate restoration are more cryptic than some of His other prophecies, but they are there for those who will take the time to notice them.  For example, Matthew pictures Jesus ending his public ministry with a declaration of coming judgment:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.  Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!” 

There is very little hope in this statement.  But notice the next sentence:

“For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’”[xiii]

Of course, those who hold to some form of replacement theology believe this day will never come.  As far as their theology is concerned Jesus should have put a period after the phrase, “you will see me no more”.  But He didn’t.  He added an important word, UNTIL.  This means there will be another day when the rejected nation would see Him again.  But on that day they will saying the same thing His followers said on Palm Sunday, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”

We notice another big UNTIL in Luke’s account of the Olivet Discourse.  “Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles,” we are told, “UNTIL the time of the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”[xiv]   What then?  What will happen after the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled?  Paul gives us an answer[xv], but for now we are concentrating on the prophetic teaching of Jesus, and while there is no explicit answer to this question in the Olivet Discourse; another day is strongly implied in His last prophetic discourse, one that occurred after the resurrection, just moments before His ascension.

In Act 1:3 we are told that Jesus appeared repeatedly to His Disciples over the next 40 days.  During this time He spoke to them about the Kingdom of God.  He may have taught them other things as well, but this is the only thing Luke mentions.   Interestingly, after forty days of instruction on this subject the Disciples had just one question: “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?”

This question gives us a glimpse into the Disciples understanding of the kingdom.  They understood that Israel had or would have the kingdom taken from them.  They also understood that at some point it would be restored to Israel. 

Jesus’ answer was, “It is not for you to know the times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority…”  Note that Jesus did not correct or dispute their premise.  On the contrary, He seems to be acknowledging that such a day will come.  His point to them was not that Israel would not that the Kingdom would not be restored to Israel, but that the time of that restoration was not for them to know.  Rather, they were to return to Jerusalem and wait for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that would enable them to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and finally, unto the remotest part of the earth.

There is one final prophecy we need to consider.  It is a promise made to the Apostles in response to Peter’s statement that he and the others had left everything to follow Jesus, and his question, “What then will there be for us?” 

And Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones,  judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”

Here Jesus refers to a time He calls, the regeneration.  And on that day the Disciples will receive their reward.  And what will the reward be?  They will be seated with Jesus on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Peter seemed to have referred to this time of regeneration in his second recorded sermon in the book of Acts:

“Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of  refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ      appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.”[xvi]

Here, Peter is speaking to an exclusively Jewish audience.  He speaks of a time yet to come.  He speaks of a time when Israel will be refreshed and things will restored.  But most importantly, he says that this period of restoration had been spoken of by God through His prophets since ancient times.  This is a clear reference to the yet to be realized promises of the Messianic Kingdom.   It is important to note that Peter did not see these prophecies being spiritually fulfilled, rather he spoke of a future time, going so far as to say that Jesus must remain in heaven until that period of restoration.   Only then would He be sent from Heaven.

And so we see that Jesus saw both a dark and a bright future for His people.  Judgment was coming because of their unbelief.  The nation would undergo a baptism of fire.  But the fire would not destroy them.  As R.C. Sproul observed, the destruction of the temple was an apoplectic event and marked the end of an important era.  That era was followed by “the time of the Gentiles”.  During this time the Jewish people have been scattered among the Gentiles and they have suffer greatly at their hands[xvii]. 

But the night will not last forever.  There will be another day, a day of restoration.  On that day the kingdom taken from Israel will be restored to her.  On that day Israel will say, “Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the LORD.” 

I pray for that day.  I pray for that day when Israel’s “warfare has ended and her iniquity has been removed.”  I pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

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[i] Luke 14:16-24

[ii] Many liberals have noted the differences in detail and context in these and other parables.  However, as one who has taught for over 35 years I know that it is common to repeat a particular story or illustration and that these differences in details in Jesus parables and discourses are best explained in this way. 

[iii] Acts 28:25b-28

[iv] c.f. Acts 3:22; 7:37

[v] Deuteronomy 18:15-19

[vi] John 1:11

[vii] Luke 19:41-44

[viii] Deuteronomy 28:64-67

[ix] I mean by this the foretelling aspect of it.  His forthtelling ministry had been operative for over a year before He began to speak of “things to come.”

[x] Matthew 13:41-43

[xi] Daniel 9:26b

[xii] Isaiah 40:1-2

[xiii] Matthew 23:37-38

[xiv] Luke 21:24

[xv] Romans 11:25-26

[xvi] Acts 3:19-21

[xvii] On the basis of Zechariah 1:15, I believe the gentiles went far beyond anything God intended in their brutal treatment of exiled Israel, and that they will be punished greatly for “touching the apple of God’s eye.”

Jesus prophecies concerning the future of “this generation”.

As we read the gospels we note that Jesus often spoke of “this generation.”  While Jesus spoke in Aramaic, the gospel writers chose the word, genea, to translate His thought into the Greek language.  The Greeks used this word to refer to a group of people born and living during a specific period of time.  In this sense it is very much like our English word, generation.   For example, we speak of the Baby Boom Generation to refer to those who were born after the Second World War, to the generation we now refer to as, The Greatest Generation.    

But the Greek word carries additional meanings.  It can also refer to a race, a kind or sort of people, a generation of people of a particular kind or race.  Most of the time Jesus used it in this sense, not just as a reference to His generation per se, but to the generation of Israelites to whom He had come and among whom He was ministering.

For example, In Luke 11:50, Jesus prophesied, “The blood of all the prophets, shed since the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation.”  Clearly Jesus was not speaking of those living in the Hindu-Kush at that time, but to His own people, the Jewish nation.  This prophecy is an echo of John the Baptist’s warning that a baptism of fire was imminent.  

In the prophetic teaching of Jesus we learn not only that judgment was coming, but why.  It begins when Jesus began to express his frustration with the unbelief He found among His people:

“To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like?  They are       like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, ‘We played the            flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’  For John the         Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon!’   The       Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a                 drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’  Yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”   — Luke 7:31-35

“And Jesus answered and said, ‘You unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you and put up with you?’” – Luke 9:41

Before long Jesus was condemning the nation for its unwillingness to believe in Him:     

“This generation is a wicked generation; it seeks for a sign, and yet no sign will be given to it but  the sign of Jonah.  For just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to     this generation.  The Queen of the South will rise up with the men of this generation at the               judgment and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom    of Solomon; and behold something greater than Solomon is here.  The men of Nineveh will       stand up with this generation at the judgment and condemn it, because they repented at the   preaching of Jonah; and behold something greater than Jonah is here. – Luke 11:29-32

Along with the condemnation came frightening prophesies of divine judgment:

 “For this reason also the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send to them prophets and apostles,             and some of them they will kill and some they will persecute, so that the blood of all the     prophets, shed since the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, from    the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the house of   God; yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation.” – Luke 11:49-51

In the days leading up to His crucifixion He spoke again of His generation’s unwillingness to receive Him:

 “The days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will   not see it. They will say to you, ‘Look there! Look here!’ Do not go away, and do not run after them.  For just like the lightning, when it flashes out of one part of the sky, shines to the other part of the sky, so will the Son of Man be in His day.  But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.”

As we examine all of these passages it is clear that Jesus had Israel in mind when He spoke of “this generation.”   But there is one final reference we need to examine, Luke 21:29-33:

“Behold the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they put forth leaves, you see it and know for yourselves that summer is now near.  So  you also, when you see these things happening, recognize that the kingdom of God is near.  Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.”

All commentators, from all schools of eschatological thought, acknowledge that “genea” can mean a race, sort or kind of people.  However, almost all insist that we should understand Jesus to be primarily speaking of a group of people born and living during a specific period of time.  However, this produces a number of problems, foremost among them is the fact that Jesus’ generation did not live to see the events He spoke of in the preceding verse.  Most notably, the second coming did not occur in their time.  

Bertrand Russell and others have seized upon this and argued that Jesus was a false prophet.  This charge has given birth to Preterism, the view that the prophesies were fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.   I think a good case can be made for a partial Preterist view, especially if one confines himself just to Luke’s account of the Olivet Discourse.  However, even Luke’s account contains prophesies that could not possibly have been fulfilled in 70 A.D.  For example, he predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Jewish people among the nations.  But Jesus also said that this scattering of the Jewish people would not be perpetual, it would only last until “the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled.”  The captivity began in 70 A.D., but the time of the gentiles continues into our own time.

Premillennialists have addressed the problem in a couple of ways.  Covenant Premillennialists have argued that that the term should be understood as referring to a kind or sort of people, believers.  The prophesy, then, is that in spite of the widespread apostasy predicted earlier in the discourse, “believers like the disciples will not pass from the earth before the parousia[i].”

Dispensational Premillennialist have argued that Jesus is referring to the generation who witnesses these things will not pass away before their completion.  They would point to Luke 21:28 and 31:

“But when these things begin to come to take place, straighten up and lift up you heads, because your redemption is drawing near….Even so you, too, when you see these things happening recognize that the kingdom of God is near.”

They would point out that the Parable of the Fig Tree is sandwiched between these two statements and are explanations of it.   The point of the Parable, then, is that when the end time events Jesus’ prophesied begin to happen they will happen quickly.  The generation that sees them start will be the generation that sees them completed.   As for Jesus speaking to the disciples as though they would personally witness these events; they would point to Mark’s account of the Olivet Discourse, and the fact that Jesus specifically said that what He was saying to them He was saying to all.[ii]  In other words, through the apostles Jesus was speaking to all subsequent disciples.

While I think there is some truth in all of these views I do not know why it is concluded that Jesus is not referring to the Jewish people when He speaks of “this generation.”  Since he invariably has Israel in mind when He uses the term in other places, why would Israel not be in view here as well? 

Jesus speaks of a terrible tribulation of unprecedented severity in the days just prior to His coming.[iii]  He went on to say that this awful tribulation would be particularly severe in Judea and on the Jewish Sabbath.  In Luke’s account of the Olivet Discourse, the focus is primarily on the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. and the subsequent results of that judgment both for Jerusalem and the Jewish people.  Is it a stretch to think that the Jewish disciples who first heard these prophesies would be wondering whether or not the nation would survive the coming baptism of fire?  Is it a stretch to understand Jesus’ prophesy as a word of assurance, that in spite of everything the nation would not perish?

This understanding of Jesus’ words is similar to the interpretation offered by certain Covenant Premillennialist.  Like them, it recognizes that the term is referring to a sort of kind of people.  Unlike them, it posits the theory that the people Jesus has in mind is the same group He has had in mind every other time He used the term, generation, the Jewish people.   The prophesy, then, is a prophesy of the survival of the Jewish people, in spite of all they experience during the time of the gentiles.

The survival of the Jewish people as a people has been one of the anomalies of History.  It should not have happened, but it did.  The survival of the Jewish people has also been a fly in the ointment of all of the schools of prophetic thought which have attempted to write them out of the script.  For example, Dr. Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum has written this critique of the post-millennial theology of Loraine Boettner:

“Boettner still allows for the salvation of Jewish individual salvation, but would prefer that they would disappear as a separate people, preferably by assimilation.  Because the Jews have        stubbornly refused to assimilate, they have brought upon themselves anti-Semitism, and upon   others strife and antagonism and are guilty of maintaining a distinction between Jewish and  Gentiles.  According to Boettner, the Jews are totally to blame for their history of persecution.   The problem is not with the Gentile attitude toward the Jews, but with the Jews failure to  disappear.”[iv]

Boettner’s view has been the historic view of the church, and replacement theology (i.e. the view that God has replaced Old Israel with the Gentile church, which is the New Israel) has been the theological excuse for one of the church’s most persistent sins, the persecution of the Jewish people.

But in spite of almost two thousand years of persecution the Jewish people endure.  I believe their survival can only be explained by the fact that God is not done with His ancient people.   And so the Jewish people have and will endure, and to the chagrin of those who would write them out of the script, this is what Jesus predicted.  

Jesus came unto His own and His own received Him not.  And so the Baptism of Fire predicted by John the Baptist and Jesus came upon the nation.  But the judgment that came upon the nation in 70 A.D. will not be the final word.  Someday,:

“’The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.  And this is the       covenant I will make with them when I take away their sins.’  From the standpoint of the gospel they [the Jewish people] are enemies for your sake[v].  But from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; for the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” [vi] (emphasis added)

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[i] R.C. Sproul.  “The Last Days According to Jesus” .  p. 57

[ii] Mark 13:37a

[iii] Matthew 24:15-22

[iv] Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Israelogy: The Missing Link in Systematic Theology, p 49.   (Dr. Fruchtenbaum received his Th.M from Dallas Seminar, and his Ph.D. from New York University.  This book is Dr. Fruchtenbaum’ doctoral dissertation. 

[v] This is not saying that they are our enemies, but that they are opposed to the gospel message we preach.

[vi] Romans 11:25b-29

Introduction: To Jesus’ prophetic teaching concerning the future of His people, Israel.

When I began to discuss the prophetic ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 7) I wrote:

“There is an ominous tone to the story of Jesus.  It began with the ministry of John the Baptist.   John’s message to Israel was that the Messiah was coming.  But this good news came with a somber announcement, He was coming to judge… : So the story of Jesus is set against the backdrop of an approaching storm, and as the story of his coming unfolds we can see the thunderheads building.”

As we begin to discuss Jesus’ prophecies concerning the future of the Jewish people we return to this theme.  As we have pointed out, Jesus’ prophetic teaching radically transformed his disciples’ timelines  for end-time events by inserting two things that had not been there before: 1. The present age, and,  2. The cross and the empty tomb.  The present age was defined as a day of sowing, the day of the Dragnet, a time during which the great gospel would be proclaimed throughout the world.   The word would produce “sons of the kingdom,” but God’s visible kingdom in the world would be filled with a pure people.  There would be tares alongside the wheat until they are removed at the end of the age.  The kingdom would be permeated by false doctrine and finally become a monstrosity in which Satan himself would find a nest.   The dragnet would bring many, “fish” into the kingdom.  Unfortunately not all would be keepers.  But what would happen to Israel, who would be the visible kingdom of God at the time Jesus carried on His prophetic ministry? 

John the Baptist had hinted at the answer in his impassioned call that the nation prepare itself for the coming of the kingdom lest they be overtaken by the baptism of fire that the Messiah would bring with him: “His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.”   

Now the Messiah had come.  The kingdom was being offered.  Jesus would formally offer Himself as the Messiah on Palm Sunday on the very day Daniel had predicted his coming.  He would be rejected.  Jesus’ teaching about his impending passion shows us that He was well aware this would happen.  But as He began to reveal the future of His people we learn that as the majority of the nation did not like what they saw in Jesus, Jesus did not like what he saw in them either.  As a result, much of Jesus’ prophecies concerning the future of Israel were ominous revelations of coming judgment.  

Over the next several posts we will be taking a detailed look at the development of this theme.  Since this theme is prominent in Luke/Acts we will be leaning heavily on Luke’s gospel.  However, Matthew records some significant material that will also be examined.

We begin with a series of prophecies that speak of Israel being rejected.  As we will see, these are not prophecies of Israel’s permanent rejection, nor does it cancel the unique covenant relationship they had with God.  Rather, it means the loss of a particular privilege, the privilege of being the visible kingdom of God upon the earth.   It would also mean the postponement of the fulfillment of Messianic Kingdom they longed for until “after the times of the Gentiles.”

Every school of eschatological thought has a timeline.  The other schools mock Traditional Dispensationalist’s “four color charts.”  However, they have their charts too, though I will agree they are colorless in comparison to some dispensationalists’ detailed outlines of end time events.

The Amillennial chart differs from the Postmillennial chart.  Covenant Premillennialism, and its newborn cousin Progressive Dispensationism’s charts, differ from the charts of the other two.   And of course, they all differ from the Traditional Dispensationalist’s chart.  But they all have one thing in common, a cross in the center of the timeline.

Jesus’ disciples didn’t have a cross on their time lines until Jesus put it there.  Jesus began to pencil it in shortly after the told the Parables of the Kingdom.  According to Matthew, our Lord began to “show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priest and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day,” right after Peter’s great declaration that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

Much attention has been focused on Jesus’ next statement, “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” This statement is obviously an important statement for many reasons, most notably because it became the basis of the Roman Catholic’s claims to supremacy.  But the next few sentences are important too, because it was at this point in His ministry that Jesus began to predict His death and resurrection.

The disciples did not like this new teaching.  Sometimes they did not understand it.  Other times they refused to accept it.  On the first mention of it Peter even took Jesus aside and rebuked Him for it.  Nevertheless, Jesus continued to pencil the cross on their timelines even though the disciples kept erasing it.  Even during the week of His passion they were still arguing over which of them would be greatest in the coming Kingdom.  And so it continued until Jesus drew the cross on their timelines with His blood.

All of the gospels make it clear that Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen to Him.  Israel’s rejection, the suffering He would endure, even the exact manner of His death, was all predicted by Jesus well over a year before the fact.  Knowing this will safeguard us against the idea that Jesus was somehow a hapless victim of victims of events He did not foresee.

Jesus did more than predict the manner of His death.  He also taught the reason for it.  He would be the ultimate sacrifice, an atoning sacrifice voluntary offering to God for the sins of the world.  In Mark’s gospel He places it at the heart of His mission, that reason for which He had come:  “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 11:45).

We see the same thing in the upper room on the night before the crucifixion.  It was there that our Lord and His disciples first celebrated the Lord’s Table.  It was there that Jesus blessed and broke the bread, which symbolized His body which was soon to be broken.  It was there that Jesus blessed the cup, declaring it symbolic of His blood before even a drop of it had been shed.  In doing this Jesus placed the cross at the center of Christian theology.

Many times young pastors are at a loss as to what to preach about during the Lenten season.   Let me suggest that you consider a series of messages Called, Predictions of His Passion.  There is a great deal of material to draw upon and there is a great deal to be learned from Jesus’ own teaching about His suffering.  The series could be ended on Resurrection Sunday with a message on Jesus’ statement to the two disciples on the Emmaus Road: “O foolish men and slow to heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!  Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?”[i] (emphasis added)

Indeed, it was necessary for the Christ to suffer, and, as Jesus went on to point out, it was predicted by the prophets, as was Israel’s rejection of the Messiah.[ii] But as Jesus began to predict His death He also began to predict a dire future for the Israel because of that rejection.

In the Parables of the Kingdom had begun to change his disciples’ timelines.  He did this by inserting an entire age which had previously not been revealed.  He also painted a dark and foreboding picture of the Kingdom of God during unforeseen age.   Now He had placed a cross on their timelines.  But what of Israel?  What would become of them during this dawning age?  This too would become a major theme of Jesus prophetic teaching in the days leading up to the cross.

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[i] Luke 24:25-26

[ii] “Who has believed our report” Isaiah 53:1; John 12:36-43; Romans 10:16

We continue our survey of the prophetic ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ by looking at the prophecies he made after He presented the Parables of the Kingdom.   We could summarize them by saying that after revealing a previously unforeseen age and the nature of the visible Kingdom of God during that age, He began to reveal additional details about this coming age, the age we are now living in.

A survey of His prophecies during the period after He gave the Parables of the Kingdom and His greatest prophetic discourse, the Olivet discourse, reveals that Jesus’ prophesies of the future centered on certain themes:

• The future of His disciples during the coming age (this would include those who actually knew and followed Him, and those who would continue the work after they passed from the scene).
• His passion, resurrection and future glory
• The revelation certain events related to the end of the age (This consisted mainly of brief, cryptic statements about the future).
• The future of “this generation”.
• The future of Israel (This and the prophecies about “this generation” may in fact be one and the same). 

In this article we will be examining the first of these prophetic themes, Jesus’ teaching concerning the future of His disciples.  It can be summarized with three words: witness, persecution and success.   These three words can be put in a single summary sentence: The disciples would bear witness of Christ, be persecuted because of it, but finally succeed in making His name known to both Israel and the Gentiles (They were slow to pick up on the gentile part of these prophecies).

Matthew 10:16-42[i] (c.f. Mark 6:6-13; Luke 9:1-6) provides us with a typical and lengthy example of His prophecies about the fate of His disciples during the age we are now living in.  This discourse occurred just before Jesus sent the 12 Apostles on their first independent mission.  After giving them authority over evil spirits and all sorts of diseases, and after giving them specific instructions concerning the immediate mission (Matthew 9:5-15), He began to speak of things they would experience, not on this particular mission, but as they ministered in days to come.

Jesus predicted that they would be persecuted by their fellow Jews, and that they would be brought before governors and kings and that they would testify to the Gentiles (Matthew 10:18).  This is a significant prediction since just a few verses before, in His case- specific instructions about their immediate mission, He had told the disciples not to go to the Gentiles but only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 

Jesus proceeded to warn them that they would be persecuted and hated of all men for His name’s sake (Matthew 10:22).  This must have been troubling news to men who were anticipating high level positions in the Kingdom that they still believed was soon to be established. 

Jesus also disabused them of the notion that He had come to bring peace to the world (Matthew 9:34-39).  Rather, He would send a sword[ii].   He predicted that He would be a polarizing figure, a divider even of families. 

With this sort of teaching Jesus began to show His disciples what they should expect in the age that was dawning even as He spoke.  The new age would be a difficult one for His followers.  Not only would they have to deal with Tares within the visible Kingdom, they would also have to face enemies from without.  As with the King they followed, there would be crosses to be carried before they wore their crowns, and a message to proclaim before the coming of the reign of the Messiah and kingdom they longed for.   

This last point was spoken of in one of Jesus’ first references to the Second Advent.  Remember, the disciples were operating with a timeline that did not have two advents on it.  Their understanding was that the Messiah would come, the kingdom would be established and everyone would live happily ever after.  Jesus had already messed that timeline up by inserting an age during which His disciples would be sowing seed rather than sitting at the Messiah’s table in His kingdom.  So if they were not going to see “the Son of Man coming in His kingdom,[iii]” except for a brief preview of it on the Mt. of Transfiguration, when would they see it?   The answer is found in Jesus’ first mention of the Second Advent:

“You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.  But whenever they persecute you in one city, flesh to the next; for truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes.”

There are a couple of things that we need to note as we examine this important bit of prophetic revelation. 

First, it seems to parallel certain statements Jesus made in the Olivet discourse:

“Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name….but the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.” (Matthew 24:9-13)

Second, Jesus seems to be speaking through the disciples to a broader audience.  Jesus often did this by punctuating his teaching with the words, “He who has ears let him hear”.   But perhaps the clearest statement of the principle is found in Mark’s gospel when Jesus told the disciples, “What I say to you I say to all.[iv]” 

I think it is also obvious that Jesus intended these statement to be understand in a broader sense because of the experience He describes — the fleeing the persecution in one city in Israel to go to the next — and the promise that they would not run out of cities until the Son of Man comes, was not something the apostles experienced[v].  

By the end of their lives most of those who actually heard our Lord speak these words were already dead and those who remained were not fleeing from city to city within the land of Israel; they were ministering in the cities of the gentiles.  However, this experience does fit well with what Jesus says will be happening in the land of Judea in the days immediately before “the coming of the Son of Man in His Kingdom”(Matthew 24:15-27) and that is where I would place these events if I were to put them on a timeline. 

And so Jesus the prophet made the twelve and all future disciples aware of the nature of their mission, and what they would normally experience as they bore witness of Him in the world.  We will be discussing the next major theme in Jesus’ prophetic ministry in our next post.

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[i] Matthew and Mark place this discourse before the Parables of the Kingdom.  Luke places it after the parables.  As mentioned earlier, I accept the chronology given in A.T. Robertson’s, A Harmony of the Gospels for Students of the Life of Christ, which follows Luke’s chronology and places it after the Parables of the Kingdom.  However, even if this discourse preceded the Parables of Matthew 13, Mark 6, and Luke 9, my overall argument would not be affected.  It would just mean that Jesus began to reveal the presence of the age we are living in a little earlier than I have placed this revelation.

[ii] It should be noted that the sword Jesus speaks of is not a sword of conquest, as in Islam, but a sword of  persecution that would not be welded by His disciples but brought against them by their enemies.

[iii] Matthew 16:28; c.f. II Peter 1:16-18; Daniel

[iv] Mark 13:37, It is interesting that this statement occurs at the end of a major session of prophetic instruction.

[v] Even if we accept the preterest view that the coming referred to was the destruction of the Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the experience does not line up with what we know about the subsequent life and ministry of the twelve.   

The Parable of the Householder is the last of the Parables of the Kingdom.  This final parable is actually more of simile than a parable.  The elements of this simile, like the parables of the Soils, Tares and Dragnet,are interpreted for us so we do not need to guess as to their meaning. 

Jesus prefaced this parable by asking His disciples, “Have you understood all these things?”  They answered, “Yes.”  But their subsequent words and actions showed that they really didn’t.  In fact, they continued to hold on to their preconceived notions of what the Kingdom would be like until the very end. 

Even on Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem they were arguing among themselves as to which of them would be the greatest in the kingdom.  This quarrel continued until it came to a head in the upper room on the evening before the crucifixion.  

The slowness of the Apostles and the church at Jerusalem to carry out the great commission and the controversy over the inclusion of the Gentiles shows that they really didn’t understand the parable of the soils.  Jesus had said that the field was the world.  But their world map had just one land mass, the Promised Land, and a number of scattered islands representing the widely scattered synagogues of the Diaspora.

Jesus surely knew that the things he had revealed to them were not completely understood.  But they at least had received the truth that they would come to understand later; and when they did He wanted them to understand what they were to do with it.   This is what the Parable of the Householder is all about.

In this short simile Jesus compared “every scribe who had become a disciple of the Kingdom of Heaven” with a household who prepares a dinner for his guests by setting the table with valuable items from his treasuries of old and new things. 

It is interesting to note that Jesus spoke here of scribes who become disciples”.  It would have been just as easy to say, “A disciple is like the head of a household.”  So, why did Jesus mention scribes?

According to the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, the scribes were “a class of scholars who, though not priests, devoted themselves assiduously to the Law.”  The scribes were “the zealous defenders of the Law, and hence, were the true teachers of the people.  At the time of Christ, this distinction was complete. The scribes formed a solid profession which held undisputed sway over the thoughts of the people.”

As pious Jewish men, the apostles had learned their theological ABCs from the scribes or their disciples.  What they had learned about the Messiah and the Kingdom of Heaven had all come from the teachings of these pious Old Testament scholars.  But now additional information had been revealed to them by Jesus.  What then were they to do with it?  Was the old truth to be discarded in favor of the new?  Had these new ideas superseded the old?  On the contrary!  The new truths were to be combined with the old in the same way in which a householder sets his table with both new and old items from his treasury.   

Jesus, then, was teaching His disciples that these new truths were not to replace the old, but to be added to it.  It was not necessary to get rid of the old because it wasn’t wrong, it was just incomplete.  Now, by adding these new truths to the old they had a complete table setting.  Or, to change metaphors, they had been given the missing pieces from a puzzle.  Now they were able to see the whole picture.

And so we learn that the Jewish expectations of the glorious coming of the Messiah and the Kingdom He would inaugurate on that day were not wrong, they were just premature.  Jesus revealed the existence of an entire age before that day when “the righteous will shine forth as the Sun in the Kingdom of their Father”.   And what will be the nature of that age?   It will not be an age of glorious triumph but of growing apostasy as the Tares among the wheat, the leaven, and the birds have their day.   As a result, the visible kingdom would be full of stumbling blocks and a home for the lawless until the angels sort it out at the end of the age. 

Nevertheless, this will also be an age in which Sons of the Kingdom would be produced by the sowing of the good seed.  This is wonderfully illustrated in another parable contained only in Mark’s account of these parables, the Parable of the Seed growing of Itself (Mark 4:26-29). 

The age we are living in can also be called the Age of the Dragnet, an age in which the great net of the gospel is being cast into the sea.  Many fish have and will be drawn in by it.  Some of those fish look pretty nasty.  But there are plenty of keepers too.  The keepers are the people of the kingdom which will be established at the end of this age.   

In the Parables of the Kingdom Jesus presented His disciples with new truths, truths which had been “hidden since the foundation of the earth” (Matthew 13:35b).   When they finally came to understand these new truths they were force to change the eschatology.  They had believed the age they were living in would end with the arrival of the Messiah, the Day of Judgment and the establishment of the Messianic Kingdom.   Since the Messiah had arrived they believed that they were living in the last days.  Now they were being forced to adjust their time-line and place an entire age in between their time, the  last days, and the Kingdom they longed for. 

Some have called this unforeseen age a parentheses.  Others have objected to this, believing it depreciates the importance of our time.  But call it what you may, it should be born in mind that it was Jesus who put this age on the time lines of all of our eschatological charts, whether Amillennial, Postmillennial or Premillennial.  And, contrary to some popular prophetic teaching, He revealed quite a bit about the nature of this mysterious time which is now our present age.

We come now to the Parable of the Dragnet.  Like the first two in this series of parables, Jesus interpreted this parable for us so we do not have to guess as to its meaning.   We note that this parable is similar to the Parable of the Tares; it is a restatement of the theme that runs through this entire series of parables; that during the coming age (the age we are living in) the visible kingdom of God upon the earth will take on a previously unforeseen form.  Certainly there would be good in it — wheat producing hundred, sixty and thirtyfold yields — but there will also be tares in the field.  As a result the kingdom will contain lawlessness individuals and stumbling blocks who will not be dealt with until the end of the age.

With this parable we once again see “the word of the kingdom” be cast into the world, not as seed into a field but as a dragnet into the sea….and it brings in a huge haul.   But the haul is not as good as it may have seemed before it was pulled onto the beach.  A closer examination reveals that it has pulled in both clean and unclean fish.  And so the good fish are separated from the bad.  The good fish are put into containers and kept; the bad are thrown away.

As with the previous parables Jesus interpreted for us, all of the details of this parable have clearly identifiable significance.  But the emphasis in this parable is not on the gathering of the fish but on the judgment at the end of the age.  Once again the angels are pictured as the agents of the coming judgment.  It is they who remove the wicked from among the righteous, and it is they who throw the  wicked into “the furnace of fire.”    

This picture of a coming day when the wicked will be removed from among the righteous and taken away for judgment is a theme that will be repeated in Jesus’ prophetic teaching.  One of my old professors once quipped that Jesus may not have clearly taught the rapture of the church, but He did teach the rapture of the wicked.  And so he did.  In fact, it is mentioned twice in this group of parables.    I believe there was a reason for this.  All good teachers repeat and emphasize the things they want the pupils to remember.  I suspect Jesus is doing the same. 

It is vitally important that we understand that not everyone who calls Him Lord is really a believer.  Not everyone who calls themselves a Christian is really a Christian, nor is everyone who claims to speak for God is really His spokesman.  But it is also God to remember that many who do not know Him will claim they do and many who would not know His voice if they heard it will claim to speak for God, and they will do much damage to the cause of Christ.

The history of visible kingdom of God in the earth – Christendom — furnishes us with abundant proof that these parables paint an accurate picture of the age we live in.  The bloody history of the church confirms the fact that many so called “Christians” are really the “sons of the wicked one.”   But there is coming a day of judgment when these pretenders will be exposed as the “bad fish” they really are and receive the punishment they deserve.    

Of course, skeptics would like to use the filthy deeds of these pretenders to paint the righteous too.  And so they charge us with all of the crimes that have been committed in the name of Christ.  Our defense is that Jesus predicted this very development.  In fact He predicted that there would come a time with the birds – Satan himself – who would build his nest in the monstrosity that the visible kingdom would ultimately become.  But the presence of tares does not mean there is no wheat in the field.  In the final analysis, Christian is as Christian does.  Not all faith saves.  And Jesus will finally say to many who claimed His name, “Depart from me you who work iniquity, I never knew you. “ 

This parable also reminds us that our day of triumph is not now but yet to come.  There is coming a day when “the righteous will shine forth as the Sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matthew 13:43),” but this is not that day.  Until that day comes the Sons of the Kingdom and the Sons of the Wicked One coexist in a kingdom where God’s will is not being done in earth as it is in heaven.

We now come to the parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl of Great price.  Like the previous two parables Jesus gives us no explanation to help us understand them.  Like the rest of the Parables of the Kingdom they help us to understand the age we are living, and like the other two, they have often been misinterpreted.

One of the reasons for this is that interpreters have taken the phrases “The kingdom of heaven is like” as an interpretive clue.  For example, the first parable says, “the Kingdom…is like hidden treasure.  So some interpreters have said, the Hidden treasure must picture the Kingdom of Heaven.  In the same way, the Lord said, “The Kingdom…is like a merchant,” and some have understood Him to being saying that the merchant is a symbol of the kingdom.  But it is important to note that all but the first parable are introduced with this same formula, and in those cases the object or person immediately named do not represent  the kingdom. 

Note that Jesus began the Parable of the Tares by saying, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a sower,” but he later identifies the sower, not as representing the kingdom but the Son of Man.   Clearly, then, the phase, the Kingdom of Heaven is like,” is a reference for the entire parable and information it contains.   So we are going to have to look elsewhere to find our interpretive clues.

As with the other parables the best place to begin is by looking at the symbols Jesus uses and see if any of them appeared and were interpreted in the previous parables (Remember in particular that in Mark’s account of these parables Jesus told His disciples that an understanding of the first parable is the key to understanding the rest).

In the parable of the Hidden Treasure we do indeed notice a symbol that has been used and identified previously, a field.  Recall that in the two interpreted parables, the parable of the Sower and the Tares, the field represented the world.   Let’s see what happens when we interpret it that way in this parable.

While we are not told who the merchant represents we do see what he does.  He purchases the world so that he can have the treasure hidden in it.  So we need only ask ourselves, do we know someone who purchased the world so that he could take some treasure from it?  The answer to this question is, yes, there is such a one.  Our Savior died for our sins, “and not for our sins only, but for the sins of the entire world.”  Thus Jesus, like the merchant in the parable, purchased the world in order to save a people from it who are, to Him, a hidden treasure of such value that He cheerfully gave all that He owned to posses it.  To a group of disciples who understood the coming of the Messiah only in terms of Israel, this was new truth.

The second parable gives us no clues as to its meaning since all of its symbols appear in the two interpreted parables.  Here we have a merchant and a pearl.  The questions are: does the merchant represent Jesus, or someone else, and does the pearl represent Jesus or the kingdom?  While there is less basis for certainty I take the merchant as symbolic of us, the ones who are seeking treasure – something of value in this world.  Suddenly and unexpectedly we find Jesus.  What then shall we do?  We give up everything else that has been previously acquired in order to have Him.  This then would be a symbolical picture of the experience Paul describes in his letter to the church in Philippi: “Whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.”  

So if my interpretation is correct, these parables are telling us that Christ joyfully gave everything he had for us, and that we should joyfully do the same for Him.  This is the gospel.  This is the good seed that we sow during this age, an age unanticipated by those who first heard these parables.

We will see how “Jesus the Prophet” finishes this remarkable revelation concerning the age we are living in, in the next post in this series.

While all would agree that the parables of the Mustard Seed and the Hidden Leaven predict the future of the kingdom during the present age, there are two different understandings of that future.  The traditional interpretation views these parables as pictures of the exponential growth and the ultimate triumph of the kingdom.   The other view sees them as dark predictions, not of the triumph of the kingdom, but of its eventual corruption.   

Naturally, the second interpretation is the less popular of the two.   For many this fact is an argument against it.  After all the former view was the view of the early church and it has been the view of the majority of the church ever since.  However, the antiquity or the popularity of an interpretation is not its ultimate test.  It should be remembered that the early church was in error on a number of things.  It should also be recalled that the majority has often been wrong.  No, the test of any doctrine or interpretation is the scriptures themselves.  So while important, the age or the popularity of an interpretation proves nothing in and of itself.  But there is another objection to the interpretation I have presented that merits a response.

One most common objection to traditional Dispensationalism in general, and to my interpretation of these parables in particular, is that it is too pessimistic.   According to the champions of the traditional view, the view of a apostate church prevents us from carrying out what they see as the church’s primary mission, the advancing of the kingdom (i.e. or the government of God), in the earth. 

For example, Progressive Dispensationalists speak of “holistic redemption”, believing that God’s plan of redemption encompasses “all people and all areas of human life – personal, societal, cultural, and political.”[i]  In other words, many evangelicals want to define to the mission of the church more broadly than just an evangelistic mission.  Their goal is to spread the government of the already reigning Christ.  Thus they find the picture of an apostate church in the midst of a world rapidly ripening for judgment as not only too pessimistic but too confining.

There is no question that our understanding of the nature of the present age will define our mission in it.  There is also no question that the revival of pre-millennialism in the mid 19^th century redefined the mission for that portion of the church that embraced it.  But like the Reformation before it, it was a necessary correction because in its efforts to advance the kingdom, the church had veered off course and the great commission had been forgotten.  

Dispensational Premillennialism provided much needed fuel that propelled the modern missionary movement to an unprecedented century of achievement.  Even one of traditional dispensationalism’s most vociferous critics, George Ladd, acknowledges as much: “It is doubtful if there has been any other circle of men who have done more by their influence in preaching, teaching and writing to promote…a passion for evangelism and zeal for missions in the history of American Christianity.”[ii]

But the beneficial effects of a teaching does not prove its correctness.  The key question remains, does the Bible paint a triumphal or a pessimistic picture of the course of the kingdom during the present age.  As we examine the subsequent writings of the Apostles and their associates in the New Testament I do not think it is possible to draw another conclusion.

Consider this from the pen of the Apostle Peter:  

“But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.  Many will follow their destructive heresies and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned.”

 Note that Peter predicts the secret introduction of destructive heresies into the church in language reminiscent of the Parable of the Leaven.   And what will be the result of it all?  The same as Jesus predicted in the Parable of the Tares, the kingdom will be full of stumbling blocks and “the way of truth will be maligned” because of them.    

 Paul makes similar forecasts.  In his second letter to the church in Thessalonica he predicted “the great falling away,” would occur before the revelation of the Man of Lawlessness, in the last days.  His warnings in I Timothy 4:1 and II Timothy 3 and 4 continue the theme. 

And where did the apostles get this bleak picture of end of the age?  The teaching of their Lord:

 “Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name.  At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another.  Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many.  Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.” Matthew 24:9-14

“When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” Luke 18:8b

This same dark scenario of the future is found in the earliest prophetic writings of the church, such as the Didache:

“For in the last days the false prophets and corrupters shall be multiplied, and the sheep shall be turned into wolves, and love shall be turned into hate.  For as lawlessness increases they shall hate one another and shall persecute and betray. – The Didache

The triumphalist would seek to refute this “dark” scenario by pointing to the promise Jesus made in Matthew 16:18: “On this rock I will build My church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it”, and ask, “Doesn’t your interpretation contradict this passage?”

My interpretation would indeed contradict this passage if the church and kingdom are synonyms.  But, what if the church and the kingdom are not the synonymous?  What if the church is a believing remnant that exists within an increasing corrupt Christendom?  What is the church consists of just “the sons of the kingdom” Jesus mentions in the Parable of the Tares?  If so, then there is no contradiction.  Because the tares will not prevent the wheat from maturing and producing its fruit, and in the end the tares will be removed from the kingdom “Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.”[iii]   So in spite of the tares in the field, the birds in the tree,  and the leaven in the dough, which represent the best efforts of the gates of hell to stop it, the church will finished its assignment and Jesus will come. 

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[i] Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism, p. 195

[ii] George Ladd, Crucial Question about the Kingdom of God, p. 49

[iii] Matthew 13:43