Postmillennial Worldview

PMW 2024-048 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

I am working my through Matthew showing the rejection of the Jews from God’s kingdom and the inclusion of the Gentiles. This helps us to see why the Olivet Discourse is given so late in Jesus’ ministry. He has given Israel every opportunity to believe in him, but they have refused. In the process we are seeing the gradual inclusion of the Gentiles in the biblical narrative. We are now ready to consider a few parabolic warnings to Israel, especially her leaders.

Matthew 22

In Matthew 22:1–14 Jesus presents the parable of the king (God) who gives a wedding feast for his son (Jesus). Those originally invited (the Jews, Matt. 10:5; 15:24) refuse to come (they do not accept Jesus as the Messiah, Matt. 23:37; 27:25; cp. John 1:11; cp. Acts 13:46; 18:6; 19:19)). As a consequence, “the king was enraged and sent his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and set their city on fire” (22:7).

This speaks of the Romans burning Jerusalem in AD 70, of which Josephus writes: “one would have thought that the hill itself, on which the temple stood, was seething hot, as full of fire on every part of it” (J.W. 6:5:1 §275). Of the Romans we read that: “they went in numbers into the lanes of the city with their swords drawn, they slew those whom they overtook without and set fire to the houses whither the Jews were fled, and burnt every soul in them” (J.W. 6:8:5 §404). Continue reading →

PMW 2024-059 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

An old lawyer’s maxim states: “If you can’t pound the facts, pound the table.” This loud procedure has been adopted by many Christians for spreading fear about orthodox (partial) preterism. They argue that many hyper-preterists were once partial-preterists, and thus orthodox preterism leads to heresy. Therefore, they loudly urge Christians to avoid all preterism as dangerous.

Partial preterism and hyper-preterism

Well, it is certainly true that many hyper-preterists started out as partial preterists. And they often boast about this fact. Indeed, Gary DeMar in his recent podcast about my Revelation commentary mentions this issue: Continue reading →

PMW 2024-044 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

Having noted the importance of narrative flow in the Gospels, we will now begin considering some of the earlier chapters of Matthew. We will notice how Matthew begins with two themes that are important for postmillennialism: (1) The decline of Israel and (2) the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s kingdom.

JESUS AND ABRAHAM

Matthew opens his Gospel by tracing Jesus’ genealogy back to Abraham, the “father” of the Jews (Matt. 3:9). [1] As we will see, Matthew will be presenting Jesus as the new Israel, the true, continuing Israel of God (cp. Gal. 6:15–16). [2] Thus, he begins Jesus’ story by tracing his genealogy to Israel’s own historical source, Abraham. In this he differs from the Gentile Luke who takes his genealogy all the way back to Adam, the historical source of all men (Luke 3:38).

In fact, Matthew even structures his genealogy in a remarkably-intriguing and rhetorically-important way. We see this as he summarizes it in 1:17: “Therefore all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the time of Christ fourteen generations.” Continue reading →