The first verses of 2 Thessalonians 2 have been an unnecessary battle ground. The Day of the Lord would not come until after the Man of Sin had been revealed. This reasoning seems obvious to Paul. It should be obvious to us if we know the early chapters of Genesis and their corporate expression in Israel’s festal calendar.
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Is dispensationalism a theological framework or a hermeneutical approach?
Dispensationalism pretends to be a “literalistic” hermeneutical approach, but it is in fact a contrived framework which results from a single, fundamental error. The fact that this error is so foundational is the reason why its “prophetic plan” is so complicated.
Final excerpt from the early pages of A. T. Ross’ Hebrews commentary. Part 1 here.
Temple and Typology
The evidence that Hebrews was written before the fall of Jerusalem in A. D. 70 is strengthened by a few other observations. Timothy is said to be alive (13:23), and while it cannot be certainly determined that this is the same Timothy that traveled with Paul, there exists no good reason not to think it is the same Timothy to whom Paul wrote two epistles.
“A paedobaptistic sociology is a misrepresentation of the Gospel. It conflates the cutting of Adam with the crushing of the serpent.”
The most biblical, thoughtful and consistent paedobaptists (the Federal Vision), believe that the failure of America’s baptistic culture can be remedied through a biblical application of paedobaptism. The answer to modern individualism is a coherent Christian sociology. I agree with that. What I disagree with is their insistence on a Covenant sociology that was made redundant at Pentecost.
“There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death.” (Proverbs 14:12)
King David committed far worse sins than did King Saul. Saul was not an evil man, yet his judgments caused the deaths of many people, including Jonathan, his other sons and even the priests of God. Why did a reign that began so well end in such tragedy?
“For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of [Adam] be three days and three nights in the heart of the [Land].”
(Matthew 12:40)
There was some to and fro recently between Doug Wilson and Andrew Perriman on the use of Greek terms for the grave and hell used by the New Testament writers. [1] Each makes some very good points (I lean more towards Perriman), concerning “what lies beneath.” When Jesus speaks of a “divided hell,” should we be overly concerned about Greek mythology? It seems to me that those who focus on the references to pagan literature in the Bible fail to see the biblical sources of many things, even if these biblical things pick up Greek names along the way.
However, neither Wilson nor Perriman really deals with the architecture of God’s work in the world, which is what actually lies beneath. As with Shakespeare, an understanding of God’s “global theatre” enlightens us concerning the shape of His stories.
And every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the meat of the sacrifice in them. (Zechariah 14:21)
Working on a post about the use of seals in Revelation, I was looking through the uses of the word “seal” throughout the Bible. Daniel 9:24, a very famous verse, showed up, and its structure struck me as worth some analysis. If structure is indeed part of the means of the Author’s communication, it is not an optional extra.
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We are working our way through the “Songs of Ascent” at church, and I’ve been asked to do Psalm 124 tomorrow. Reading through it, I could just state the obvious, as all the commentators seem to do (though they do make very helpful observations), but wisdom and songs came with Israel’s “Pentecostal” age of rule (Day 4, the Kings, Testing) so the literature of the time is as harmless as a dove but as subtle as a serpent. There is no way this song is as simple as it seems. Again, it took me a while to crack the structure, and what comes out is not what I expected. It is not a song of Israel escaping from her enemies. It is a song of Israel not getting what Israel deserves.
“For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.”
Matthew 23:4
One of the great benefits of understanding the “preteristic” nature of the New Testament is the way the many supposedly “generic” apostolic warnings in the epistles are suddenly grounded in their Jewish context. The destruction of the Temple barely gets a mention in any church today, yet when the letters of Paul, Peter, James and John are understood to be aimed at Jews outside the Church and Judaizers inside it, the New Testament doesn’t become less relevant to us, but more relevant.
Her husband is known in the gates,
When he sits among the elders of the land.
Proverbs 31:23
“A Christian is a living, walking, talking testimony to the end of the world—to a cosmic, judicial maturity, the ‘adulthood’ of mankind.”
Doug Wilson is right to emphasize the “eschatological reality” of the final judgment, but surely the requirements and mode of baptism should communicate that reality?
If the process of “salvation through Covenant” is pretty much the same under the New as it was under the Old, as he believes, why did circumcision become baptism? Why the change in the Covenant “road sign” if there’s no real change concerning what’s down the road?
