Why the Millennium Can't Be the Millennium

 http://users.bible.org/articles/why_millennium_cant_be_millennium

May 31, 2012

The proposed dispensational premillennialist millennium has a major flaw: it’s not heaven. It is finite, proposed to last for exactly one thousand years. Its end is predetermined and known by all: massive rebellion and destruction...If I were a gambler, the only safe bet would be to trust Christ now, because the proposed dispensational premillennialist millennial kingdom is one of the largest bones of contention in current evangelical circles, and if that peculiar interpretation of scripture happens to be mistaken, then anyone waiting until after the proposed “secret rapture” to cast in with Christ will be eternally lost.

Why the Millennium Can’t Be the Millennium

By Christina Wilson

^NET  Revelation 20:7 Now when the thousand years are finished, Satan will be released from his prison ⁸ and will go out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to bring them together for the battle. They are as numerous as the grains of sand in the sea. ⁹ They went up on the broad plain of the earth and encircled the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and devoured them completely.

The proposed dispensational premillennialist millennium has a major flaw: it’s not heaven. It is finite, proposed to last for exactly one thousand years. Its end is predetermined and known by all: massive rebellion and destruction.

What features of a proposed millennial kingdom do dispensational premillennialists paint?

I. The church has been raptured out.

According to dispensational premillennialists,¹ the church will be raptured away before a seven year tribulation on earth. These saints will receive glorified bodies, similar to Christ’s body on earth after His resurrection. The wedding feast will occur in heaven, and Christ, accompanied by the glorified saints, will return to earth for the battle of Armageddon and the proposed, subsequent millennial kingdom.

The rapture is sometimes called a “secret”, because no one on earth will actually witness its occurrence except Christians.² It is tantamount to an elopement, which is defined as running away secretly to get married.

Scripture calls the church Christ’s “beloved”.³ Jesus Christ, the wholly divine Son of God died an agonizing death upon the cross to redeem His bride from sin, in order to make her white, white as snow. Why would Christ return for His bride in order to elope with her? Would elopement befit a King of kings and the bride whose purchase price was His own blood?

Why is the proposed premillennialist rapture a secret? Why an elopement?

1) The secret rapture is termed such because the coming of Christ for His bride is considered a “partial coming”, or part one of a split coming.⁴ According to premillennialist reasoning, the coming of Christ for His bride is not permitted to be the Second Coming. They have reserved the Second Coming of Christ as a separate occasion for a certain stage of judgment, and they place it towards the end of Revelation 19. The rapture, however, they place near the beginning of Revelation, even in the white space between chapters 3 and 4.⁵

Continuing the premillennialist thought, the Second Coming of Christ scripturally cannot be a secret; all men will know He has come. Further, scripturally there can be but one visible, mighty, glorious Second Coming of Christ. Therefore, if Christ’s coming for His bride is not to be considered the Second Coming, it must be a secret. If it were known by all, it would constitute the Second Coming, which dispensational premillennialists do not want to have happen at that particular time.

2) Dispensational premillennialists have planned a proposed millennial kingdom in which the fulfillment of kingdom promises will be specific to ethnic Israel. The Old Testament promises, according to their thought, do not include the church. Since their proposed millennial kingdom is an earthly, physical kingdom, the church, Christ’s beloved for whom He died, must be removed. (How could one exclude them if they were still present on earth?) Therefore, dispensational premillennialists have proposed a rapture which precedes the proposed millennial kingdom. Since this proposed rapture is not permitted to be the Second Coming, it therefore must be a "secret", "partial" coming. For those who may find this line of thought confusing, please consider.

^ESV  1 Corinthians 14:33 For God is not a God of confusion but of peace…

II. The proposed dispensational premillennialist millennial kingdom will be a mixture of fully human subjects and resurrected saints in glorified bodies, whose role will be to help Christ reign.

In the above scenario, the church has been raptured out, given resurrected and glorified bodies, been wed to Christ (secretly) and will return with Him in His Second Coming to reign on earth for one thousand years. Because they will proposedly have been given their glorified bodies, they will be able to come and go from earth as they please. Part of their role will be to witness and win nonbelievers to Christ. Nonbelievers will consist of children of ethnic Israelite believers and children of the believing nations.⁶

III. Jesus Christ will be physically present on earth during the proposed dispensational premillennialist millennial kingdom.

IV. What would the proposed kingdom be like for nonbelievers?

Nonbelievers in the proposed millennial kingdom will have every conceivable advantage to help them believe in Christ, especially when compared with the present age.

·       Christ will be physically present with them in a resurrected, glorified body.

·       Resurrected, glorified saints will be physically present with them, witnessing to them for the purpose of salvation.⁷

What room would there be for faith in such a kingdom when all would be clearly and readily seen with the physical eyes? Faith would seemingly amount to assent only to that which would be openly visible and concrete all around them.

^NET  Romans 8:24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees?

Most of the New Testament, written as it is for comfort and encouragement for perseverance in faith and for hope during trial and distress, would be obsolete. Nonbelievers in the proposed millennial kingdom would be, as it were, spoon-fed from a silver platter. Biblical history would have all but been accomplished. A risen Christ would be physically present. Physical testings and tribulation as everyday occurrences on earth, as all of us now live life here, would be non-existent. Everything would be beautiful and wonderful, morally pure and correct.

V. Except…the disjunction.

It would all be veneer. It would be surface assent to Christ only. Hearts would not be converted. Acquiescence would be insincere and shallow. Sin, though perhaps not outwardly present, would rule the hearts. Why do I say this?

^NET  Revelation 20:7 Now when the thousand years are finished, Satan will be released from his prison ⁸ and will go out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to bring them together for the battle. They are as numerous as the grains of sand in the sea. ⁹ They went up on the broad plain of the earth and encircled the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and devoured them completely.

Let’s imagine. Choose any of the roles in the proposed millennial kingdom and try it on for size. Christ would be ruling a kingdom of which He knew that countless numbers would perish in hell at its termination. Glorified saints, having seen and tasted the heavenlies, would know that the supposed paradise on earth was false, shallow, insincere, finite, about to be tragically ended at the close of exactly one thousand years. Believing Israelites within the kingdom and believing Gentiles living outside the kingdom proper would not know which of their progeny would be saved and which would be destroyed in one thousand years’ time and go to everlasting torment. The progeny themselves would see it, hear it, live it, know it, but countless numbers of them would remain dead in their hearts, unchanged, prone to sin, and about to be deceived into rebellion at the end of exactly one thousand years.

Is this glorious? Is this what the entire Bible, in dispensational premillennialist thinking, has been leading up to? Is this the touted kingdom? Really, except for the presence of Christ and numerous glorified saints present on earth, how would that kingdom be different from what we have now?

The difference would be concrete and physical. Most physical suffering would have ended. But what about men’s souls? Would that have changed? The Bible says no. That would not be changed.

^NET  Revelation 20:7 Now when the thousand years are finished, Satan will be released from his prison ⁸ and will go out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to bring them together for the battle. They are as numerous as the grains of sand in the sea.

Remember, according to dispensational premillennialists, these accursed rebels are all children of believers, all having been born after the inauguration of the proposed millennial kingdom. Only believers enter the kingdom or the nations surrounding it. All these rebels “as numerous as the grains of sand in the sea” would have been born during the proposed millennium.⁸

What advantages would such a proposed kingdom give to anyone?

The advantages would be concrete, physical, literalistic, temporal, and finite (physical blessings for all), and they would end in eternal tragedy for numbers of people as countless and “numerous as the grains of sand in the sea.”

What is missing in this picture? That which is missing is “Christ IN you, the hope of glory”—inward, spiritual fellowship through the Holy Spirit with a risen, eternal, ever-present Lord.

^NET  Colossians 1:27 God wanted to make known to them the glorious riches of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

^NET  John 17:23 I in them and you in me– that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me.

NET  John 6:47 I tell you the solemn truth, the one who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life.

NET  John 17:3 Now this is eternal life– that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.

Yes, the glorified, previously raptured saints would have Christ in them; the proposed believers saved during the proposed post-rapture tribulation would presumably have Christ in them, but what about all the nonbelievers born during the millennium? Numbers of them as countless as the “grains of sand in the sea” would know nothing of the risen, eternal Lord and King dwelling within them. How would that be any different than the situation which exists today?

VI. What would the role of a Christian in a glorified, resurrected body during the proposed dispensational premillennial kingdom be?

The most wonderful Christians I know, those such as my current pastor, grieve and mourn daily, even minute by minute, laboring ceaselessly for the salvation of the lost. What joy would a raptured Christian experience as a member of the bride of Christ, having been returned to a non-redeemed earth of which scripture foretold that in exactly one thousand years souls as numerous as the sand in the sea would be judged and condemned to eternal damnation? What would be the one desire of such Christians?

Evangelism. Knowing that the time was short (exactly one thousand years on an eternal scale is very short), they would want to go out and evangelize the lost, who would be indistinguishable in an earthly near-paradise among all the children of believers, those lost who would be giving lip service only to the King of kings. Knowing that their efforts would be futile for countless people as numerous as the grains of sand in the sea would fill their hearts with grief and despair. Would this be joy or misery for the bride of Christ?

For evangelists at heart, would the proposed millennial kingdom be any different than the situation today? The greatest temptation, I believe, for Christians today is the temptation to sit back and do nothing. How great a temptation might that be for believers in a world of peace and prosperity, one where very little physical suffering remained?

But, because we are speaking of a raptured church ruling with Christ in the proposed kingdom, resurrected saints in glorified bodies would be beyond temptation and sin. What would it be like for those millions of previously raptured believers to be living on an unredeemed earth, albeit one having perhaps received a partial makeover, knowing that countless millions of mortal people in front of them were still going to be judged and sent to hell? The best Christians I know would be suffering, grieving, mourning, and working incessantly to save the lost. That’s the millennium?

Unless, of course, everyone would be content to sit idly by enjoying the material blessings and benefits. Where is the weight of focus now in dispensational premillennialist thought? Isn’t it on the “fulfillment” of Old Testament promises, interpreted as coming in the form of concrete, literalistic, physical, and material blessings? Would the focus during the proposed millennium remain there?

Ah, but someone will object, Christ will rule with a rod of iron, and there will be a standard of goodness, peace, and morality higher than any since the fall. But Revelation 20:7-9 puts the lie to that scenario. According to that passage, any such goodness and morality will not spring from a genuinely reborn nature. When temptation and deception would again be permitted by the unbinding of Satan (Revelation 20:7), mankind would once again express their rebelliousness to the extent of numbers “as numerous as the grains of sand in the sea”.

VII. Blending

Some dispensational premillennialists believe that the millennial reign of Christ is the first installment of His eternal reign, and that the proposed millennial kingdom will fall into a “blending” into the eternal state.⁹ But is this what scripture teaches? Is Peter in the following verses describing a “blending”?

^NET  2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief; when it comes, the heavens will disappear with a horrific noise, and the celestial bodies will melt away in a blaze, and the earth and every deed done on it will be laid bare. ¹¹ Since all these things are to melt away in this manner, what sort of people must we be, conducting our lives in holiness and godliness, ¹² while waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God? Because of this day, the heavens will be burned up and dissolve, and the celestial bodies will melt away in a blaze! ¹³ But, according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness truly resides.

Yet, the timing of the above verses must precede the eternal state and follow any proposed earthly, millennial kingdom. Do you see a “blending”?

Further, why would Peter in those verses be exhorting today’s unraptured church on earth to live holy and godly lives in waiting for the “day of God”, if by the time that day were to come, the proposed rapture, the tribulation, and the proposed millennial kingdom would have already occurred?

My premillennialist study Bible notes on this passage posit two such days of God—one at the time of the tribulation on earth and a second “1,000 years later at the end of the millennial kingdom”.¹⁰

According to the premillennial view, the tribulation will follow the rapture and be exactly seven years in duration. Yet the biblical text says that the “day of the Lord will come like a thief”. Could a thief surprise someone who knew he’d be coming in a definite period of only seven years? Do you see a contradiction?

Further, everyone who might be alive at the time would know that the literalistic millennium proposed by dispensational premillennialists would last exactly one thousand years after a second coming of Christ. Counting alone would give a fairly accurate knowledge of the exact year of the second “day of God” proposed by dispensational premillennialists as an interpretation of 2 Peter 3:10-13. Yet, the biblical text says that “the day of the Lord will come like a thief”. Another contradiction?

One last contradiction between the biblical text and the dispensational premillennialist interpretation of dual “days” of the Lord is that the construction in Greek is singular. Surely Peter knew enough Greek to use a plural construction if he had intended to imply two distinctly separate days of the Lord? Or, perhaps the dispensational premillennialists have a greater revelation than the Apostle Peter?

Does the dispensational premillennial view add up to coherence?

A Personal Note on What I  Believe

Preparing this article has convicted my heart that I am not currently doing even the smallest iota of what I should be doing in terms of evangelism to reach the lost. What I described above as the evangelistic needs of the proposed premillennialist millennial kingdom are just as true today as I described they would be then. Selah.

……….

Now is the time which scripture calls “today”.

^NET  Hebrews 3:15 As it says, "Oh, that today you would listen as he speaks! Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."

^NET  Hebrews 4:7 So God again ordains a certain day, "Today," speaking through David after so long a time, as in the words quoted before, "O, that today you would listen as he speaks! Do not harden your hearts."

Now is the only moment in time when salvation is certain for those who would accept Jesus Christ as their Lord.

I do not personally believe that after Christ comes for His beloved bride for whom He died—which is His church and includes believers of all ethnicities of all ages and all times— that there will be life on earth as we know it today. I believe that Christ will come once very openly and visibly to all the earth simultaneously. He will come with the recompense of reward in His hand for those who love Him and with judgment in His hand for those who do not. (Matthew 24:27; Matthew 25:31-46; 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-10;  Hebrews 9:24-28; Hebrews 10:32-39; Jude 1:14-15). His one coming will embrace both the gathering of His beloved to be with Him forever as His bride and the gathering of all for judgment.

I believe that the millennium is right now, today.^{11, 12}  I believe that God in His infinite wisdom  today uses the suffering and misery of this fallen world as a tool to draw His people home to Himself through His Son Jesus Christ (Romans 8:28). Think: if effective evangelism is as difficult today as it now is, how much more difficult would it be in a world in which there would be no outward motivations for any unsaved person to search her own heart? No outward circumstances of trial and tribulation to cause an unsaved soul to squirm and question her place in the universe? Scripture tells us that evangelism in the millennial kingdom will have an extremely high failure rate at its close: rebels as “as numerous as the grains of sand in the sea.” These countless rebels will all be children of the proposed millennial kingdom, under that proposed scenario.¹³ Is that a song for hallelujia?

I believe that the millennium is right now, today, that Christ the King is reigning right now on His throne in heaven and in the hearts of all saved believers present on earth in the church militant (Zechariah 9:9; Matthew 21:5; John 12:15). Many Christian theologians have taken this view (See footnotes 11 and 12 for two examples). Therefore…

If I were a gambler, the only safe bet would be to trust Christ now, because the proposed dispensational premillennialist millennial kingdom is one of the largest bones of contention in current evangelical circles, and if that peculiar interpretation of scripture happens to be mistaken, then anyone waiting until after the proposed “secret rapture” to cast in with Christ will be eternally lost.

Today is the only safe moment in eternity to consider the claims of Christ and turn to Him for salvation. Anyone who teaches a day of salvation that follows “today” may be sorely mistaken, not to their eternal damnation, but if they are mistaken, then it might be to the damnation of any unbelievers who may have believed their teaching and decided to wait and see what might happen after the proposed rapture.¹⁴

^NET  Hebrews 3:15 As it says, "Oh, that today you would listen as he speaks! Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."

^NET  Hebrews 4:7 So God again ordains a certain day, "Today," speaking through David after so long a time, as in the words quoted before, "O, that today you would listen as he speaks! Do not harden your hearts."

Please place your trust in Jesus Christ, not in a proposed millennial kingdom.

__________

1 Such as John MacArthur, Because the Time Is Near; Chicago, Moody Publishers, © 2007

2 Beth Moore, DanielLives of Integrity Words of Prophecy, Nashville, Tennessee, Lifeway Press, © 2006, Eighth printing March 2011, page 169.

3 ^ESV  Ephesians 1:6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved; and numerous other citations.

^ESV  2 Thessalonians 2:13 But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.

^ESV  1 John 3:2 Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

4 NET (New English Translation) Bible version notes on Zechariah 9:9; also found in John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible, New American Standard Bible Updated Edition, Thomas Nelson, Inc., © 2006, page 1319, note on Zechariah 9:9,10.

5 John MacArthur, “A Jet Tour Through Revelation”,  December 05, 1982, available at http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/1290/A-Jet-Tour-Through-Revelation .

6 John MacArthur; Because the Time Is Near; Chicago, Moody Publishers, © 2007, pages 298, 299.

7 Ibid., page 299

8 Ibid., pages 301-303.

9 “The day will come when the church is raptured out and God will mediate His will on the earth in a direct way as He pours out judgment on the earth, takes the earth back, and the mediates His rule on the millennial kingdom for a thousand years with Christ reigning on the throne until the eternal state in which everything falls into the blending of God's sovereignty in the final form of our existence. So I would be a very historic dispensationalist.” John MacArthur, I.F.C.A. Meeting (6-26-89), Part 1; available at http://www.gty.org/resources/Print/Sermons/90-36

10 John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible, New American Standard Bible Updated Edition, Thomas Nelson, Inc., © 2006, page 1929, note on 2 Peter 3:10.

11 William Hendriksen, More Than Conquerors, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Baker Books, © 1940,1967, pages 142 f., 185-193.

12 Arturo Azurdia III, Sermons, Revelation, available at  http://www.spiritempoweredpreaching.com/sermons.htm

13 John MacArthur; Because the Time Is Near; Chicago, Moody Publishers, © 2007, pages 301-303.

14 Some dispensational premillennialists do teach that the mass conversion of ethnic Israelites is scheduled to follow the rapture of the church. However, if as many biblical scholars believe, the rapture of the church and the second coming of Christ are aspects of one and the same event, and if judgment follows immediately after the second coming, then there will be no conversions after any of those eternally simultaneous events, not of ethnic Israelites nor of anyone else, in that history as we know it today will have been completed.

For a proposed period of salvation after the rapture, see:

John MacArthur, Because the Time Is Near; Chicago, Moody Publishers, © 2007, pages 16, 187, 312.

John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible, New American Standard Bible Updated Edition, Thomas Nelson, Inc., © 2006, page 1683, note on Romans 11:26.

For opportunity to appropriate salvation by grace alone today, see footnotes 11 and 12 above.

Concrete/Spiritual Conundrum—The Big Change

http://users.bible.org/articles/concretespiritual_conundrum%E2%80%94_big_change

published May 22, 2012

 Concrete/Spiritual Conundrum—The Big Change

By Christina Wilson

May 21, 2012

Overview of Article: Three examples from scripture highlight “The Big Change” from the Old Testament to the New—God and Christ inaugurate Spirit, where before there was only concrete.

I. Semantics.

The word “literal” has mixed meanings, depending upon who is using the word. In some minds, “literal” means concrete, as opposed to figurative. For example, if you receive a birthday card with a picture of a cake on it, or a picture of a $100 bill on it, those would be figurative gifts, as opposed to literal gifts. Often, as in the above example, the word “literal” becomes synonymous with “truthful”, as opposed to false. Frequently, the word “literal” is seen to be in opposition with “spiritual”, as when “spiritual” is equated with “figurative” or “metaphorical”.

“Literal” then, takes on positive values when used as in the above paragraph, and spiritual, when equated with “figurative”, takes on negative values. “Literal” is seen to be real and truthful, whereas “spiritual” receives connotations of “metaphorical”, and is therefore seen to be false, as with the cake on the birthday card example.

How does scripture use the word “spirit”?

“Spirit”, as used in scripture, is a very real, and a very “literal” word, when “literal” is used as meaning “truthful”. Spirit, however, is not concrete—it is spirit. Spirit is, however, literal. I prefer using the word “literalistic” to indicate “concrete”, when concrete is meant to be contrasted with “spiritual”. As I use the words, “literal” means true, and “literalistic” means concrete.

II. The Big Change—Example One: the Household of Cornelius

A. The condition of mankind in the Old Testament was literalistic, in the sense of being concrete. People died to God spiritually in the Fall in the Garden. Their spirits died within them; they had no communication with God internally, by means of His Spirit. God is Spirit and truth. When humankind was excluded from the Garden, people no longer had spiritual communication with God. Communication with God became concrete.

B. How did God communicate with people? God communicated with people as He wished and when He wished through visible manifestations of messengers (Genesis 18—the three men who visited Abraham by the oaks of Mamre), through concrete manifestations of Spirit (Exodus 3—Moses and the burning bush; Exodus 13:21—the cloud and pillar of fire), through visibly concrete miracles (parting of the Red Sea, water gushing from a rock), and through prophecy (Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah).

C. People communicated with God through obeying His commands, sacrifice, prayer, payment of vows, and by sending requests to God through the prophets. The Holy Spirit did not for the most part indwell the hearts of Old Testament saints.

D. Prophecy was often very concrete in the Old Testament. Ezekiel and Hosea, for instance, frequently acted out messages from the Lord as He directed them. Ezekiel, for example, would wear certain clothes or present his body in a certain way, he would perform actions specified by God, and then use words to explain the meaning.

I believe it would be fair to say that Old Testament understanding of God and His message was quite a bit different for saints (believers, those who feared God) and for nonbelievers alike (one who perhaps was an ethnic Israelite but whose heart was not sincere towards God) without the Holy Spirit as we know Him today.

E. The Holy Spirit Prophesied

The prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Joel promised the coming of the Holy Spirit.

^NET  Isaiah 44:3 For I will pour water on the parched ground and cause streams to flow on the dry land. I will pour my spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your children.

^NET  Jeremiah 31:33 "But I will make a new covenant with the whole nation of Israel after I plant them back in the land," says the LORD. "I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds. I will be their God and they will be my people.

^NET  Ezekiel 39:29 “I will no longer hide my face from them, when I pour out my Spirit on the house of Israel, declares the sovereign LORD."

^NET  Joel 2:28 After all of this I will pour out my Spirit on all kinds of people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your elderly will have revelatory dreams; your young men will see prophetic visions. ²⁹ Even on male and female servants I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

F. The Prophecies Fulfilled…but Wait!—God Included Gentiles in Their Fulfillment

Were Gentile nations or the church mentioned in the above prophecies? No. Was the church thereby excluded? No. The New Testament clearly shows that God’s Holy Spirit was poured upon the Gentiles.

^NET  Acts 10:44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all those who heard the message. ⁴⁵ The circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were greatly astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, ⁴⁶ for they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, ⁴⁷ "No one can withhold the water for these people to be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did, can he?"

Israelite believers were the first group to receive the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and shortly afterward. In the above scripture, the “circumcised believers…were greatly astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles”.

Does the fact that the “circumcised believers” did not exclusively receive the gift of the Holy Spirit negate the validity of fulfillment of the Old Testament promises of God’s Spirit for the nation of Israel? No. Those prophecies were literalistically and literally fulfilled. The fact that God chose to extend the gift to Gentiles and “the church” did not in any way invalidate or negate fulfillment of the promises to the nation of Israel.

Would anyone at all dare say that in order to consider the promises of the Holy Spirit to be fulfilled literally, concretely, and fully—that is, the specific Old Testament promises of God that he would send His Holy Spirit upon those people’s “offspring”, “children”, “house of Israel”, “sons and daughters”, “elderly”, and so forth—that the promises needed to be fulfilled in a way that did not include the church?

We saw in Acts 10:45 above, that indeed the expectation had been that these were promises God had made exclusively to “circumcised” believers, not Gentiles. The text says that those with Peter were “greatly astonished” to see the extension of the prophecy to Gentiles. And clearly, it was God who had done so, not the Gentiles claiming the gift for themselves.

In view of the above scriptures, would anyone today dare insist that there must come a future time for Israel to receive the Holy Spirit when the church would no longer be present on earth and the Old Testament “house of Israel” would be purely alone, in order to consider the promises literally and completely fulfilled? I have never heard anyone say that.

Is God’s sovereignty permitted to extend to Gentiles the fulfillment of a promise He made to ethnic Israel only?

Peter in Acts 10:46-47 said yes, God’s sovereignty is allowed to do that—“then Peter said, ⁴⁷ ‘No one can withhold the water for these people to be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did, can he?’”

G. Greater to the Lesser

When Peter in Acts 10 above requested the baptism with water of the Gentile believers, in his mind, which was the greater of the two events—the receiving of the gift of the Holy Spirit or the physical baptism in water? Peter’s statement reveals his reasoning to be the following: if God Himself gave the greater gift of Himself in the giving of the Holy Spirit to these Gentiles, how can we, His servants, refuse to give the lesser action of a physical baptism in physical water?

H. Conclusions

From the above discussion involving the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies concerning the giving of the Holy Spirit, we have seen certain facts.

1) The prophesies had been made specifically to the “house of Israel” (Ezekiel 39:29).

2) In fulfillment of them, God had extended the blessing to the Gentiles.

3) No one present in the Acts 10 example protested, although they were “greatly astonished” (vs 45).

4) No one to my knowledge has ever claimed that the extension of the blessing to the Gentiles caused the original promise to be considered as not having been fulfilled and as still awaiting fulfillment.

5) Peter realized that God’s action in giving the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles was a greater action than physical water baptism applied by men.

I. Questions

Given that 1) the promise of the Holy Spirit was specifically given to ethnic Israelites,  2) that the promise as fulfilled by God was extended by Him to Gentiles, and 3) no gift can ever be greater than the gift of God Himself—then, why would a promise of land to Abraham be considered as different from the promise of the Holy Spirit? Especially when the entire New Testament is a message of inclusion of the Gentiles into the people of Israel? ¹

Is the land promise considered differently than the promise of the Holy Spirit? and in what way?

Many Christians will say that Gentiles, i.e., the church, are specifically excluded from the land promise simply because they were not specifically included in it. Yet, we have seen that Gentiles were not specifically included in the promise of the Holy Spirit, yet they were not excluded from fulfillment of the promise, nor does anyone complain. So, that is a different response in a similar circumstance.

The promise of the Holy Spirit was given to ethnic Israelites, yet Gentiles were included in its fulfillment. The land promise, likewise, was given to ethnic Israelites, yet many Gentiles (Christians) themselves insist that they are and should be excluded from fulfillment of the promise, the grounds being that they were not specifically named in it. This is not consistent. It is a split hermeneutic.

Someone might try to explain away the inconsistency by saying that the two promises were completely different—one was spiritual to begin with (the Holy Spirit) and the other concrete (land). That doesn’t explain, however. It merely states. Why should the lesser—concrete, physical, material, created things (land)—be given a tighter standard of fulfillment than the greater—non-created, eternal, godly things (the Holy Spirit—God Himself)?

III. Jesus Explains The Big Change—Example Two: Nicodemus

Jesus challenged two people in John’s gospel to make the change in their understanding from the concrete of the Old Testament way of thinking to the spiritual way of thinking characteristic of the New.

First, how do we know that Jesus intended such a change? The answer is that He talked about change.

^NET  Luke 5:36 He also told them a parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old garment. If he does, he will have torn the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. ³⁷ And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. ³⁸ Instead new wine must be poured into new wineskins. ³⁹ No one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is good enough.'"

Background to Nicodemus (Example Two) and The Woman at the Well (Example Three)

Nicodemus represented the best of Israel. We can assume his morals were great, his education the best, and his pedigree pure. Jesus did not confront Nicodemus in the areas of moral virtue or the purity of his ethnicity, but he did confront Nicodemus in the area of his religious learning and thought.

The Samaritan woman at the well, on the other hand, represented the worst. She lacked moral virtue, as a woman she presumably had no education, and her ethnicity was mixed, containing pagan elements, as did that of all Samaritans. While Jesus did comment on her lack of moral character and upon her lack of education (“You people worship what you do not know”), he never suggested she lacked intelligence or an ability to understand. He accepted her questions at face value and engaged in serious conversation with her, revealing Himself to her in a surprisingly direct and complete way.

Nicodemus

^NET  John 3:1 Now a certain man, a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council,  ² came to Jesus at night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs that you do unless God is with him."

Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, wanted to know the source of Jesus’ ability to do miracles. (Could this man possibly be Messiah?)

That Nicodemus was thinking about Messiah is acknowledged by Jesus’ reply—

^NET  John 3:3 Jesus replied, "I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God." ²

Wasn’t Nicodemus a Pharisee, a member of the “Jewish ruling council”? As such, he would surely know that the “kingdom of God” was a concrete kingdom with a concrete king, concrete land, and concrete boundaries, wouldn’t he? So then, why did Jesus say that a person must be “born from above” to see the kingdom of God? That intimates at the very least a spiritual aspect to the kingdom, doesn’t it?

But Nicodemus’ understanding was firmly rooted and grounded in the concrete, and he could not grasp the spiritual content of Jesus’ statement. To our ear, his second question seems ridiculous, due to its being pinned to the concrete—

^NET  John 3:4 Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother's womb and be born a second time, can he?"

Jesus expanded the spiritual elements in His second reply to Nicodemus’ very concrete question.

^NET  John 3:5 Jesus answered, "I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. ⁶ What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Do not be amazed that I said to you, 'You must all be born from above.' ⁸ The wind blows wherever it will, and you hear the sound it makes, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Jesus directly distinguished that a difference exists between flesh and spirit: “flesh is flesh” and “Spirit is spirit.” Already, “The Big Change” has arrived and is bearing down upon Nicodemus, who has no equipment with which to understand what Jesus is talking about. To understand what Nicodemus must have been feeling at that moment in terms of frustration, remember that he went to Jesus with a concern about His perhaps being Messiah and that perhaps the long awaited kingdom was about to arrive. And, from his point of view, Jesus began talking about what could only appear to Nicodemus as nonsense.

^NET  John 3:9 Nicodemus replied, "How can these things be?"

It appears that next Jesus scolded Nicodemus soundly for his inability to understand—

^NET  John 3:10 Jesus answered, "Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you don't understand these things? ¹¹ I tell you the solemn truth, we speak about what we know and testify about what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony. ¹² If I have told you people about earthly things and you don't believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?

Notice that Jesus again distinguished between “earthly things” and “heavenly things”. Jesus named “belie[ve]f” as the issue at hand. It was a matter of accepting Jesus’ testimony. Jesus named two groups: “us” and “you”. The “you” that Nicodemus belonged to, according to Jesus, refused to believe the testimony of “us”, which at that time was limited to earthly things but in the future would include heavenly things as well.

^NET  John 3:13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven– the Son of Man. ¹⁴ Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

Nicodemus went to Jesus with very concrete concerns on his mind—visible, material miracles, Messiah, and the kingdom. Jesus replied using an exclusively spiritual vocabulary. Even something as concrete as Moses lifting up a metallic, sculpted snake on a literalistic pole in the wilderness received at the very least a metaphorical meaning that Nicodemus at that time could not possibly have understood. Jesus then mentioned “eternal life”. What does eternal life have to do with Messiah and the inauguration of an earthly kingdom?

This was how Jesus, the King, answered Nicodemus, an Old Testament thinker, when he went to Jesus and asked a concrete question about the kingdom. Had there been a big change of which Nicodemus had no clue?

IV. Jesus Explains The Big Change—Example Three: Woman at the Well

^NET  John 4:4 But he [Jesus] had to pass through Samaria. ⁵ Now he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, since he was tired from the journey, sat right down beside the well. It was about noon. ⁷ A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me some water to drink." ⁸ (For his disciples had gone off into the town to buy supplies.) ⁹ So the Samaritan woman said to him, "How can you– a Jew– ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water to drink?" (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.)

Notice all the concrete details John has given in this narrative; it is as though John included all these physically concrete details with a purpose in mind. The details are literalistically real, historical, and contextually rooted in Old Testament scriptural history: “Sychar”, “the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph”, “Jacob’s well”, “sat right down beside the well”, “about noon”, “Samaritan woman”, “draw water”, “Give me some water to drink”, “his disciples had gone off into the town to buy supplies”, “you—a Jew…me, a Samaritan woman”, “water to drink”.

The woman’s question to Jesus was as literalistically historical and contextually concrete as one could possibly hope for, “How can you—a Jew—ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water to drink?” John’s comment was also literalistically historical and contextual—“(For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans)”.

^NET  John 4:10 “Jesus answered her, ‘If you had known the gift of God and who it is who said to you, “Give me some water to drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

Had it been Nicodemus to whom Jesus spoke these words, he would have replied, “Huh?” But the woman, to her credit, was quick on the uptake and shot right back at Jesus—

^NET  John 4:11 "Sir," the woman said to him, "you have no bucket and the well is deep; where then do you get this living water? ¹² Surely you're not greater than our ancestor Jacob, are you? For he gave us this well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and his livestock."

Notice, however, that the woman has not left her concrete mindset. She accepted Jesus’ enigmatic proclamation of “living water” without question, apparently not even stopping to consider what kind of water that might be. Her mind remained rooted in the historical, contextual, concrete fact of her ancestor Jacob, who physically drank from the well himself, along with his sons and livestock (this is so concrete we can almost hear the goats bleat and breathe the dust in our nostrils that their hooves kicked up). Further, Jacob has passed the well down through his progeny to her own people. That is also historically very literal and contextual.

Jesus’ next reply is very similar to a childhood fairytale, These are magic beans that will grow up into the sky when you plant them.

^NET  John 4:13 Jesus replied, "Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again. ¹⁴ But whoever drinks some of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life."

I find it fascinating that Jesus, as a teacher, never left the plane of the woman’s concrete thinking, but persisted in using His own spiritual vocabulary, introducing new terms and concepts each time He spoke, expanding His spiritual meaning without contradicting her concrete level of understanding. We, as New Testament Christian readers, know exactly what He was talking about without having to stretch at all (having gone to Sunday school and countless Bible studies in which the teacher “told us the answers”), but the woman received simply and completely what Jesus spoke in her own concrete way.³

^NET  John 4:15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water."

At this point, Jesus performed the miracle of supernatural perception of the woman’s past. She, for her part, realizing that He was a prophet, asked a question one would ask of a prophet.

^NET  John 4:19 The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem."

Notice that the woman’s question was still entirely concrete, rooted in the contextual, historical aspect of religious worship—“our fathers worshiped”, “this mountain”, “you people”, and “Jerusalem”.

Jesus, for His part, gave the woman a concrete, historically contextual response in keeping with her question—but, He then extended His answer and taught her directly some new vocabulary and concepts that left the concrete and entered into spirit.

^NET  John 4:21 Jesus said to her, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But a time is coming– and now is here– when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers. ²⁴ God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

Jesus made several noteworthy points:

i) “a time is coming” (there will be a change)

ii) “and now is here” (the change has arrived)

iii) “when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” (the change would be complete—neither of the only two forms of worship then in practice would be continued)

iv) “you do not know…we know” (there was a right and a wrong)

v) “true worshipers” (false worshipers are implied as an alternative)

vi) “will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (the change, which “now is here” is specified)

vii) “the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers” (the change is willed and named by God)

viii) “the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (there will be a correct way to worship God, no exceptions)

The woman had described the then current situation of worship—which was rooted in literal, historical, concrete facts—“this mountain” and “in Jerusalem”. Jesus changed all that. He set up a contrast between the literal, historical, and concrete and the new, the big change—to…“spirit and truth”.

Was Jesus “spiritualizing”? Yes. But Jesus is God. He can and did do that. Was He speaking figuratively? No. Jesus was speaking literally, as indicated by His saying, “…the people who worship Him must worship in…truth”. Very truthfully, Jesus was announcing a truthfully literal change from the concrete to the spiritual.

The conversation closed with a literal, absolutely historical statement of a concrete fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy—

^NET  John 4:25 The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (the one called Christ); "whenever he comes, he will tell us everything."

^NET  John 4:26 Jesus said to her, "I, the one speaking to you, am he."

Recap: What had the literal, concretely contextual and historical Messiah said? “"…a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…a time is…now…here– when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers. ²⁴ God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

From concrete to spiritual in an entirely concrete, literal, historical, contextual conversation between a woman and the Son of God, Messiah.

V. More Questions and Conclusion

We’ve seen three solidly biblical examples of how concrete Old Testament expectations were changed by God in the New Testament. They were 1) the previously unknown and unannounced gift of the Holy Spirit to Gentile believers, contrary to Old Testament expectations, 2) the necessity of a spiritual rebirth to see the kingdom of God, completely unknown to Old Testament believers such as Nicodemus was, and 3) the necessity of a change of worship, in order to be acceptable to God, from physical actions in a physically concrete, historically contextual location to a worship entirely in spirit, having no physical location as a marker at all.

All three of these changes were made by God Himself.

Question: in view of the above, how could it possibly be considered unreasonable for believers to question whether or not other features of Old Testament understanding need to be re-examined in light of New Testament revelation previously unknown? ⁴

God “greatly astonished” Peter’s Israelite companions by giving the Holy Spirit to Gentiles, an event completely unknown in Old Testament promise and prophecy. Nicodemus, a traditional Old Testament religious ruler and teacher, was at a complete loss to comprehend the nature and necessity of a spiritual rebirth in order to “see the kingdom of God." And, Jesus completely toppled Old Testament worship when He made “The Big Change” from the physically concrete, literal, and historical mode of Old Testament worship to “spirit and truth”.

Wouldn’t it behoove us to walk humbly  in our assertions concerning things concretely literalistic, our claims concerning what the sovereignty of God may and may not do, and our demands that because God “said it” in such-and-such a concretely Old Testament way, that He therefore must perform exactly according to our literally concrete, physical, Old Testament understanding?

I do not claim to know the answers to the Old Testament land promises, but I do know that those promises need to be prayerfully examined in the light of The Big Change which Jesus Himself and God Himself inaugurated in Jesus’ first advent to earth, the big change from concrete flesh only to “spirit and truth”.

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1 See “Overview of Paul in Ephesians 1 through 3—One Election or Two?”, Christina Wilson, Appendix, and http://users.bible.org/articles/overview_paul_ephesians_1_through_3%E2%80%94one_election_or_two

2 For a complete discussion of the biblical meanings of “kingdom” of God and Christ, see George Eldon Ladd, “What is the Kingdom of God?”, from The Gospel of the Kingdom, Grand Rapids, MI, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., © 1959, as reproduced in http://gospelpedlar.com/articles/Last%20Things/kogladd.html 

3 Herein lay a great difference between this woman and Nicodemus. Jesus had said to Nicodemus, “I have told you people about earthly things and you don't believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”. The woman, on the other hand, readily believed every word that Jesus spoke to her, even though her understanding remained entirely concrete. In her mind, she believed that Jesus could offer her water that, once in her stomach, would continuously flow in a physically concrete way, to the extent that she would not have to go to the well to draw water again. The fruit of this woman’s belief came to include an entire town; whereas scripture gives us no indication of Nicodemus’ having born any fruit at all outside his own heart. She believed; Nicodemus didn’t.

4 See “Part IV: Ephesians Chapter 3—The Mystery” in “Overview of Paul in Ephesians 1 through 3—One Election or Two?”, Christina Wilson, Appendix, and http://users.bible.org/articles/overview_paul_ephesians_1_through_3%E2%80%94one_election_or_two