IAIN MURRAY AND HISTORICAL HOPE

Optimism March 4, 2025 Comments: 2

PMW 2025-018 by Iain MurrayPuritan hope

Note from Ken Gentry:
The following is an excerpt from Iain Murray’s The Puritan Hope, pp. xviii–xxii. He is explaining his conversion from premillennial thinking to a more hope-filled eschatology as found in many Puritans.

For some while after I gave up the millenarian view of future history the only truth respecting unfulfilled prophecy which I could regard as clear was this great one that Christ’s coming will be at the consummation of his kingdom. therefore all conversion-work yet to be in history must occur before the Second Advent. Of the certainty or extent of any future work I was entirely in doubt. I still retained the conviction that the testimony of Scripture on human depravity requires the expectation of an ever-darkening world and the signs of the twentieth century seemed to point me to the same conclusion.

Only very slowly did I come to believe that the Christian Church has indeed a great future in the world and this conviction came as the result of several lines of thought. For one thing all the scripture texts claimed as proof that the coming of Jesus Christ must now be close at hand have also been confidently so used in former generations. Not a few Christians in the past have been erroneously convinced that their age must witness the end. When the Teutonic barbarians overturned Rome and reduced a stable world to chaos in the fifth century A.D., many in the Church despairingly drew the wrong conclusion that the world could have no future. Even larger numbers did so at the approach of the year 1000, believing that the closing millennium would end the world. In the gloom of the fourteenth century such tracts appeared as The Last Age of the Church, and in terms very similar to that old title a great number have written since. Continue reading →

REDEEMING ALL OF CREATION

Uncategorized February 28, 2025 Leave a comment

PMW 2025-017 by David M. RussellWorld in God's hands

This post is excerpted from David M. Russell, The “New Heavens and New Earth,” pp. 167–173
Russell is focusing on Romans 8 and its implications for cosmic renewal in the new heavens and near earth. This world is not as it will always be: a fallen world under the curse of God. One day it will be renewed in glory and righteousness, at the coming of Jesus Christ. The following is Russell’s work.

It is apparent that Paul’s primary concern in this passage is not present suffering, although such is not to be dismissed easily as a petty distraction. His central focus is clearly the future glory. The entire section is therefore dominated by the theme expressed in the word apokaradokia, the “anxious longing” (NASB), “eager expectation” (NEB), or “eager longing” (NRSV) which is the characteristic outlook of the created order. In this term, which occurs in the NT only here and in Phil. 1.20, Paul ascribes to the creation an attribute of positive and confident anticipation. While the etymology of a word may be misleading, that Paul apparently constructed the word is instructive. The verb, from kara (“head”) and dechomai (“to take,” originally “to stretch”), gives the image of “craning the head forward,” that is, straining with outstretched head to catch the first glimpse of an object in the distance. The preposition apo may suggest “diversion from other things and concentration on a single object.” Continue reading →

UNDERSTANDING COLLAPSING UNIVERSE PROPHECIES

Dispensationalism, hyperpreterism, Interpretation February 25, 2025 Comments: 5

PMW 2025-016 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.Meteors

Two Errors ….

A number of prophetic passages (especially in the OT) speak of the universe collapsing. This has caused serious theological problems for two opposing eschatological schools.

Dispensationalism cannot interpret these passages in context because they approach them in a fully-literalistic sense. Thus they argue, these passages must be pointing solely to the distantly future second coming of Christ. Dispensationalists are committed to a half-truth in this interpretation, as I will show.

But then there is the hyper-preterist movement that interprets these passages as solely symbolic. They deem the falling-star passages as symbols of collapsing government. And these passages usually point to the collapse of Israel’s government under God’s wrath and judgment. Thus, they interpret these passages as picturing the coming AD 70 judgment of old covenant Israel. Hyper-preterists are committed to a half-truth also. Continue reading →

THE TWO AGES, PAUL, AND JESUS

Age(s) (Two Ages), Uncategorized February 21, 2025 Comments: 5

Vos Reformed EschatologyPMW 2025-015 by Geehardus Vos

Gentry note:
I have recently edited several of Geerhardus Vos’ important eschatological articles and chapters in a new book: Reformed Eschatology in the Writings of Gerhardus Vos. Bill Boney and I have brought them up to date in terms of style and layout, making them easier to read for a 21st century Christian. This is a small section touching on the important issues of the two ages, which is a concept I will be explicating in a new book later this year. This material is found in our edited book on pages 10–16.

Paul’s Distinction from the Old Testament

In distinction from the OT point of view, the structure of Paul’s eschatology appears antithetical. It places the end under the control of one principle with the sway of which an opposite principle of equally comprehensive rule and of primordial origin is contrasted. This is done so as to make the two, when taken together, yield a bisection of universal history. By giving the soteric movement this cosmical setting it claims for it the significance of a central world-process, around the core of which all happenings in the course of time group themselves. By this one stroke order is brought into the disconnected multitudinousness of events. Continue reading →

THE NEW WORLD

New Creation February 18, 2025 1 Comment

Beautiful earthPMW 2025-014 by Geerhardus Vos

Gentry note: This material is take from Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics. It has been re-published in Reformed Eschatology in the Writings of Geerhardus Vos (2024).

35. What will precede the consummate salvation of the children of God?

The appearance of a new world. Scripture speaks of that very clearly. In Acts 3:21 Peter speaks of an apokatastasis, a ‘restoration of all things.” And in Revelation 21:5 He who sits on the throne says: “Behold, I make all things new.” As a matter of fact, all this is inherent in the relationship to the rest of creation in which man stands. It is given to him so that he would rule over it. It has been carried along with him in his fall. Continue reading →

OUR ETERNAL CONDITION

New Creation, Resurrection February 14, 2025 Comments: 6

New Earth 3PMW 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 →

WHY I AM MY BODY, NOT JUST MY SOUL

hyperpreterism, Resurrection, salvation February 11, 2025 Leave a comment

Matthew 10-28PMW 20250-12 by Gregg Allison

Theological anthropology focuses on the doctrine of humanity and explores such topics as the nature and origin of human beings and the image of God. Historically, much discussion has been dedicated to the soul, or immaterial aspect of human nature, with little or no attention given to the body, or material aspect.[1] This essay proposes that the proper state of human beings is embodiment and seeks to rectify some of the historical and (even) contemporary oversight of embodiment. It will pursue this thesis—which I will call the “embodied person” view—by some close interaction with a contemporary theologian, Joshua Farris, and his fine work An Introduction to Theological Anthropology.[2] Both of us hold that humans are composed of soul and body but we emphasize different aspects of that dualist human constitution: Farris, the immaterial; I, the material. Continue reading →