The Next Episode of "The Future" Is Up! "This Age and the the Age to Come: the Implausibility of Premillennialism"

Episode Synopsis:

I begin this episode with a personal testimony.

I was born and raised a dispensationalist. Our family owned a Christian bookstore. The first Christian book I picked out and read on my own was Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth. Years later, I was challenged by one of our delivery men about the books we were selling–all the dispensationalist best sellers. He said he was “Reformed.” I thought he meant that he had gone to “reform school” or was on work release from prison. The questions he put to me bounced off like BB’s against a Battleship. Dispensationalism was biblical. How could anyone doubt that?

But those BB’s actually penetrated my embarrassingly thin armor. Eventually, I became a very reluctant Calvinist and then I started re-thinking my eschatology. After university and a year at the Simon Greenleaf School of Law (which was founded by John Warwick Montgomery, the faculty included Walter Martin, and Rod Rosenbladt, and is now the Trinity Law School in Santa Ana), I was steadily moving away from my doctrinal roots (Arminian and dispensational). I found that the Reformation views on law and gospel, the five solas, and the end times, were absolutely compelling because they were thoroughly biblical. To my surprise Drs. Montgomery and Rosenbladt suggested a career change–seminary, specifically the new seminary in Escondido (90 miles to the South), Westminster Seminary California.

In the Acts and Paul class taught by Dennis Johnson, I first encountered what I came to know as the two-age model–terms I was familiar with from reading the New Testament but never thought much about–“this age” and “the age to come.” After reading Herman Ridderbos and Geerhardus Vos on Paul, I realized how serious a challenge the two-model was to my premillennial eschatology (I had pretty much given up on most of my dispensationalism by then, although I still thought like one). Driving home after Dr. Johnson’s class, I had an “ah-ha moment.” “I can’t be premillennial any more.” The two-age model makes premillennialism (in all its forms) a biblical impossibility. I dug in my heels and fought the inevitable. But here I am far down the road, presenting and defending the two-age model. If you’ve not heard this before, you are in for a real surprise. This is a game changer in terms of your view of the end times.

Show Notes:

This has been the worst year for allergies I can remember. I start to lose my voice toward the end of the episode.

This series is based upon conferences lectures I’ve have given through the years. They have been updated and edited for “The Future.”

Links for This Episode:

This Age and the Age to Come -- Biblical Texts

A comprehensive (but not too technical) book on the two ages in Paul: Paul and the Hope of Glory

Doug Moo on the two ages (or realms) in Paul (27-39): A Theology of Paul and His Letters

G. K. Beale address the “two age” and “the already/not yet distinction” (129-184) in: A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New

Bibliography for the “Future”

What to Read About the End Times

What Should I Read to Learn About Covenant Theology

Daniel Hummel's "The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism"

A Reply to John MacArthur's Critique of Amillennialism

Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies

Eschatology Charts (scroll down)

Music:

(Shutterstock): Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op 92m, second movement, Allegretto (A minor)