Psalm 2 is a favourite among Postmillennialists. It speaks of the kings of the Earth setting themselves up in opposition to God and His Anointed – a clear anticipation of the coming Christ.
Their nations are given to Christ as His inheritance and He
will break them with a rod of iron. The nations are consequently warned and
instructed to kiss the Son, in other words to submit to and reverence Him.
Premillennialists have always believed this Psalm would be
fulfilled during the millennial Kingdom, when Christ (they believe) will return
to Earth and reign in Jerusalem for 1000 years. Postmillennialists believe this
supremacy of Christ, this golden age or millennium will appear prior to
Christ's return and thus this Psalm (along with Psalm 72) are taken as a call
to arms, a call to bring this reality into being. They also will usually speak
of this in connection with their understanding of the petition 'Thy will be
done on Earth as it is in Heaven' found in the Lord's Prayer.
Both hermeneutics are guilty of Judaizing, that is reading
the New Testament in light of the Old. Both schools of thought set doctrinal
foundation stones in the Old Testament and when the New Testament presents a
new lens by which to view these passages – they dig their heels in and like the
Jews they refuse to understand the Christocentric nature of their fulfillment.
The New Testament teaches the Old Covenant has been fulfilled
and as such is abrogated. Apart from the New Testament, the Old Covenant
writings are a dead letter – as indeed they are to the Jews today. Christ has
come and that changed everything. The apostles were appointed by Christ to
draft the New Covenant Scriptures and while they are built upon and interact
with the old, the New Covenant is better, based on better promises, and has
considerably more light and grace. Amazingly this offends some people, but it's
a New Testament concept.
We are able to know so much more than what was revealed in
Old Covenant type and shadow. Returning to the Old Testament and reading it
through a Christocentric lens we understand the nature of Old Testament
prophecy, its perspective, idiom, and sometimes poetic nature. We understand
how there are layers to typology and even the voices of the prophets (and the
Psalmists) are often indistinguishable from the voice of the True Prophet –
Christ Himself.
In the New Covenant writings we learn that while the
Resurrection proclaimed the triumph of Christ over the realms of death and this
present evil age, His Final Judgment has been delayed due to the longsuffering
of God and based on a plan that glorifies Him and His Grace.
Christ is reigning in heaven at the right hand of the Father
and yet the inheritance of the New Heavens and New Earth of which we (in union
with Him and adopted into the household of God) are destined to receive has
been delayed. We experience a foretaste of it (or earnest) by means of the
Spirit, but we are not yet in possession of it. Christ is reigning but not yet
fully reigning. He is reigning eschatologically but not yet in terms of the
current temporal order. There is a still a tension between this age and the age
to come – the present evil age and the consummated Kingdom of Glory. Under this
oft repeated scheme in the New Testament, there's no room for Jewish-inspired
millenniums in either the pre- or post- variety.
The prophetic passages and psalms which deal with the reign
of Christ always blend the tension that now exists and the heavenly realities
which exist in eternity. But in terms of what we today might call space-time or
history, they are present in that already- not yet form. Temporally speaking
they only find their ultimate fulfillment at the eschaton (the end of history
as it were), the closing event surrounding the Coming of Christ – a concept
encapsulated in New Testament terms such as parousia,
epiphaneia, and apocalypsis. These terms also reflect the tension and thus may be
spoken of in light of what we call His First coming and certainly are
applicable in terms of His Second Coming. In the Old Testament the concepts are
often blended and in terms of prophetic perspective they are presented as a
single event.*
The triumphant picture we see in Psalm 2 is a reflection of
the eschaton and the Final Judgment that comes with it. Postmillennialists will
challenge this but in doing so they are entering into argument with the Apostle
John and more specifically the glorified Christ he quotes.
In Revelation 2, Christ exhorts the Thyatiran Church to hold
fast till I come, for them to overcome,
and keep His works unto the end. Then
to those that do so they will be given power
over the nations, and he shall rule
them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to
shivers; even as I received of my Father.
Revelation 2 makes clear that the fulfillment of Psalm 2 (which
it quotes) is found in the eschaton, when He comes again. At the very least
this excludes the Postmillennial reading.
We reign with Christ in the Age to Come and inherit the
nations as its rulers (both human and celestial) are cast out. The elohim
rulers of the nations (the thrones and principalities sometimes referred to as
angels) will be judged by us (1 Cor 6) and are doomed to die like men (Psalm
82). We will reign in their place in the new glorified Earth.
It must also be pointed out that the reigning and victory
envisioned by the Postmillennial scheme is no great cause for optimism. Their
reign is one in which death still has its grip, one in which the curse is still
be found, and one in which the believer still wrestles with sin. The
eschatological Kingdom of Heaven referenced by Christ in Revelation 2, is one
in which the victory is a true victory – it is the realm in which there are no
more death and no more tears, a realm in
which evil has no place and righteousness reigns. And this knowledge also
excludes the Premillennial schema as well as the Kingdom they envision is one
in which death and evil are still to be found.
The Old Testament must be read through a New Testament lens.
To do otherwise is to dishonour Christ and to read the Old Covenant in an
unfaithful manner. As an active covenant
document the Old Testament is fulfilled and thus disannulled as the New
Testament itself indicates. And yet it is inspired writing. Though some deem it
controversial to say, it has been superseded by the apostolic writings – the
better covenant as Hebrews says it. The Old Testament is still Scripture but
fulfilled and no longer in force as such as an authority in and of itself. This
does not mean it is not replete with helpful information, doctrine,
exhortations to holiness and of course a great deal of information about God
and His plan. But it must be read and interacted with under the aegis of the
apostolic writings we know as the New Testament. They certainly quote it and
utilise it and we need to be careful to understand how they do so. Church
history is full of examples of those who have not or who have willfully
neglected their example and what the Bible says about itself.
Once again, I contest it was no coincidence that Paul, Peter,
and John all ended their writings with exhortations and warnings about the
Scripture and its authority. In 2 Timothy, Paul argues for the Sufficiency of
Scripture which certainly included the Old Testament but he roots his
exhortation to Timothy in what he was taught about the Holy Scriptures. This is
not to concede anything to Rome and its contrived tradition but rather points
to the fact that Timothy's knowledge of the Scriptures were rooted in things he
had learned and been assured of by his apostolic teachers – not as a standalone
text. That period ended with the tearing of the veil in the Holy Temple.
Peter explicitly refers to Paul's writings as Scripture. Paul
also quotes Luke as Scripture. And John was undoubtedly conscious that he was
the last apostle writing the last book of the New Testament and he gives the
appropriate warning which applies not only to his work but by implication to
all the apostolic writings.
A right understanding of the New Testament's place and
supremacy reveals not only the errors of Postmillennialism but of Dispensationalism
and Premillennialism as well. These systems are built upon an inverted
hermeneutic that subjects and sometimes subsumes the apostolic writings and
doctrines to principles established in the Old Testament – the pre-epiphanic
revelation cast in type and shadow. This is a great mistake and it has been
subject to a great deal of abuse throughout Church history as many have thus
read the Old Testament out of context and utilised it to justify dark deeds and
less than Christian ethical behaviour.* *
Let us avoid that error and read the Scriptures faithfully.
As Christians we ought to and must read the Old Testament, but we must do so
faithfully.
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*Prophetic Perspective views distant events like a distant
mountain range. It appears seamless and unified but when approached the
divisions and multiple ranges become more evident. Additionally, in theory the
Coming of Christ was to be one grand event (or series of events) and is, but
God's plan was revealed to include a period of delay in which the Gentiles are
brought into the Household of God. The delay is inconsequential in terms of
God's time-table even though it manifests as thousands of years to us.
**As I write this American Evangelicals clamour to the aid of Israel even as it bombs Gaza and mows down Palestinians by the dozen. These actions are supported and encouraged due to a misguided and Judaized reading of the Old Testament in which it is erroneously assumed that the Old Covenant is still in effect, the Jews are still God's chosen, and the land is still holy – awaiting the construction of a Third Temple. The very notion is blasphemous and represents a categorical rejection of Christ's work and its sufficiency.
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