Postmillennial Worldview

PMW 2025-013 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

The immediate entrance of our souls into heaven upon departing this life is a glorious expectation. But heaven is not our final destiny. God has more in store for us in the new, renovated earth which he will establish after the Final Judgment.

Scripture teaches that we may expect a reconstituted, material new earth for a variety of reasons. Consider the following evidence in this direction.

First, the biblical analogy

We may expect a renewed earth on the analogy of the transformation of the individual’s body in the resurrection. When Jesus returns he will resurrect the dead into material bodies. Paul teaches that Christ’s own resurrection is the “first fruits” of the full resurrection at the end. So then, whatever Christ’s body is like at his resurrection is a sample of our resurrection bodies (1 Cor 15:20). In Philippians 3:21 we read that Jesus “will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.” Continue reading →

PMW 2024-090 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

A Brief Testimony
When I enrolled at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, I had just converted out of dispensationalism. I had been thoroughly schooled in dispensationalism at Tennessee Temple College in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Upon graduating from Temple with a degree in Biblical Studies, I enrolled in the M.Div. program at another dispensational institution, Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana.

While at Grace I stumbled onto O. T. Allis’ book Prophecy and the Church. This book led me out of dispensationalism and toward a Reformed eschatology. My transformation was not complete upon reading Allis, however. That completion would not be reached until I had studied for two years at Reformed Seminary, to which I transferred after two years at Grace. Continue reading →

PMW 2024-021 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

As we have been witnessing in Internet discussions of late, hyperpreterism is inherently Gnostic in its basic outlook. They not only do away with our physical bodies by proposing a spiritual (i.e., immaterial) body at the resurrection (or at the point of death). But many of them also teach that even Christ’s own physically-resurrected body has dissipated and been replaced with a spiritual body. Along these lines I would like to speak to a related issue regarding our eternal destiny in the new heavens and new earth.

We need to understand that with God matter matters. God created the material universe. He created a material man to rule over the material earth. He sent his Son in a material body to save his people from their sins. He resurrected Christ in a material body. And we will be resurrected in material, re-constituted bodies. And we will do so in anticipating inhabiting a perfect, material, reconstituted new earth. Truly, matter matters in the biblical worldview. Despite the Gnostic elements in hyperpreterism.

From time-to-time I make the mistake of reading hyperpreterist literature. And on occasion someone will send me a quote from their musings. Often enough I see complaints directed against me that demonstrate they are not well read or theologically trained.

The matter about which I am speaking [1] at the moment is the frequent (and frustrating) complaint that “Gentry believes Christians will not live in heaven with Christ for eternity.” What they are complaining about is my fully orthodox, widely-held, biblical view that in the eternal, consummate order believers will live on the new earth in their resurrected bodies after the physical second coming of Christ and the final judgment. We certainly do go to heaven at death now, but in heaven we await the resurrection and final judgment before our final estates are fully entered into [2]. Despite hyperpreterists’ confusion, our dwelling on the new earth will not involve our being separated away from Christ. Of course, we do not know all the particulars, but we may rest assured that there will be direct communion between heaven and earth in eternity.

Continue reading →