Postmillennial Worldview

PMT 2014-102 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

In this article I conclude the citation of John Lightfoot’s notes on Revelation 22, wherein he discusses miraculous gifts and tongues-speaking as apostolic signs that were not to continue after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Except that those gifted with these phenomena before the fall would continue until they themselves died, and so would end such gifts.

Here is the conclusion to Lightfoot’s comments begun in PMT 2014-101:

At the first dispersing of the gospel, it was absolutely needful, that the first planters should be furnished with such extraordinary gifts; or else, it was not possible it should be planted. As this may appear by a plain instance: — Paul comes to a place, where the gospel had come never come; he stays a month or two, and begets a church; and then he is to go his way, and to leave them. Who now, in this church, is fit to be their minister? they being alike but very children in the gospel: but Paul is directed by the Holy Ghost, to lay his hands upon such and such them; and that bestows upon them the gift of tongues and prophesying; and now they are able to be ministers and to teach the congregation. Continue reading →

PMT 2014-101 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

In that I am reading the works of Reformed scholar, Westminster Divine, and rabbinic authority John Lightfoot (1602–75), I will present some of his insightful materials. Though he is an historicist (see PMT 2014-100), his historicism focuses much on the first stage of the historicist movement in AD 70.

And in that I believe the gift of tongues was an eschatological phenomenon providing a sign that the last days had begun with the final establishing of the new covenant in AD 70, I will present his interesting notes on Revelation 22. These are found in vol. 3 of The Whole Works of the Rev. John Lightfoot (vol 3, pp. 368–71). Continue reading →