Let me clearly state my millennial position at the very beginning of this book. I am not a premillennialist, an amillennialist, or a postmillennialist. I am a millennial agnostic. I honestly do not know what to believe about a millennium. In one sense, I am an existential millennialist, since I am unsure if an objective viewpoint exists, and even if it does, I am by no means certain that I can access it. I have no hope of finding the final answer. Let me explain.

1. Most Premillenialist requires an earthly, Jewish kingdom that lasts one thousand years (a literal millennium).^[1] If this kingdom fails to materialize, God has broken his covenant with Abraham, because part of that covenant included a Promised Land. An earthly kingdom requires an actual place, capable of being located on a map. At the risk of over-simplifying, the minimal requirement for premillennialism is one thousand years of Jewish rule in the physical Promised Land. If this is an accurate account of premillennialism, then I cannot be a Premil. I see no necessity for a millennium of earthly rule to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies concerning an “everlasting kingdom.” It seems to me that the hermeneutic that produces this view is flawed. If we insist on a rigid literalism in this matter, then one thousand years of rule does not qualify as everlasting. In the light of forever, one thousand years is a tiny fraction. Furthermore, if we posit an everlasting kingdom that is marked by certain geographic boundaries on this planet as it presently exists, then we preclude the possibility of a literal new earth. Here is a typical Premil statement.

In order for God to keep His promises to Israel and His covenant with David (2 Samuel 7:8-16, 23:5; Psalm 89:3-4), there must be a literal, physical kingdom on this earth. To doubt this is to call into question God’s desire and/or ability to keep His promises, and this opens up a host of other theological problems. For example, if God would renege on His promises to Israel after proclaiming those promises to be “everlasting,” how could we be sure of anything He promises, including the promises of salvation to believers in the Lord Jesus? The only solution is to take Him at His word and understand that His promises will be literally fulfilled.^[2]

2. Amillennialism, as I understand it, requires that there is no earthly Jewish kingdom that lasts for one thousand years (a literal millennium). If this is an accurate understanding of a millennialism, then I cannot be an Amil. Where is there a Scripture text that says there cannot be an earthly Jewish kingdom that lasts for one thousand years? The belief that there is no necessity for a thousand-year earthly kingdom and the belief that the Bible teaches that there will be no such thing are two different beliefs. I feel the same way about an earthly millennium that I do about the gift of tongues. I see no reason for the revival of the gift of tongues and I do not see a biblical reason to believe that such a revival will occur. However, I also have no text of Scripture that specifically states that tongues will not be revived. Again, I think the hermeneutic that produces this view is flawed.

3. Postmillennialism, as I understand it, requires a millennial reign of righteousness resulting from either a gradual conversion of the world, or a “latter-day revival” that converts the world. If this understanding is accurate, then I cannot be a Postmil. I do not find such a tenet in Scripture, and I believe this position, like the others, comes from a flawed hermeneutic.

As is often the case in theological discussions, the conversation about prophecy is complicated in two ways: through the use of non-biblical terminology and through careless definition of the biblical terms that are used. Few people realize that the Old Testament contains no references at all to a millennial reign of the Messiah. The New Testament contains only six references, all within a single passage—Revelation 20:2-6. If we were to eliminate Revelation 20:2-6 from the conversation, we would have no reference point for a millennium, and thus no millennial views, yet we could retain and meaningfully discuss the multiple Old Testament references to an eternal kingdom. In other words, some of the Old Testament writers referred frequently to a coming eternal kingdom, but none of them ever mention a millennial (thousand-year) kingdom. As I pointed out earlier, a millennial kingdom is not the same thing as an eternal kingdom. A thousand-year kingdom cannot fulfill the promise of an eternal kingdom. We must not equate the millennium and the eternal kingdom and allow six verses in Revelation 20 to frame our understanding of the promised eternal kingdom of God.

When I was in Bible school, over fifty years ago, the predominant theological trend was to treat the words kingdom and millennium as interchangeable. The word premillennial meant pre-kingdom. It meant that the return of Christ was prior to the establishment of the kingdom that God had promised to Abraham and the children of Israel. In this scheme, the millennial reign of Christ described the kingdom that Messiah offered the Jews at his first coming. They rejected it, and thus God postponed its implementation until Messiah’s second coming. More recently, premillennialists maintain that the millennium is an aspect of the kingdom. The words “millennium” and “kingdom” are no longer interchangeable.

What would happen if we used the phrase eternal kingdom instead of the word millennium to describe and define our prophetic view? We would then have the following three views IF we maintained the current categories used in this discussion: pre-eternal kingdom; a-eternal kingdom; and post-eternal kingdom. Let us, then, pose the following question: What is the relationship of the second coming of Christ to the eternal kingdom promised to Abraham, David, and the Jewish nation? Has Messiah already established that kingdom or will he do so in the future?

Those who hold the a-eternal kingdom view would believe there is no eternal kingdom. This position would indeed make God unreliable in that he has promised something that will not happen. Who wants to adopt this view? I think we could eliminate this category from the discussion. There would be no a-eternal kingdom (amillennial view).

Those who favor the post-eternal kingdom perspective would believe the establishment of the eternal kingdom precedes the second coming, but if the kingdom is eternal, there is no after-the-kingdom, and thus we are hard-pressed to speak meaningfully about a temporal second coming. Some Christians have adopted the doctrine of a non-physical return of Messiah, but no Christians I know of suggest a non-temporal return. Nothing can happen after the eternal kingdom, because given the nature of eternity, there is no after. Given the terms of the discussion, it would seem impossible to hold a post-eternal kingdom (postmillennial view).^[3]

An individual who holds the pre-eternal kingdom view would have to believe that the eternal kingdom has not yet come. Who wants to deny that the kingdom has come in some sense and to some degree? I think we can eliminate this view, too, from the discussion. There would be no pre-eternal kingdom (premillennial view).

If we recast the conversation with the promised kingdom terms, we eliminate all three millennial views. This is why I am an existential millennialist. I am not, however, an existential or an agnostic kingdomist (if I may coin a new term for this discussion). The hermeneutical point that prevents this is the way that the authors of the New Testament Scriptures interpret the kingdom promises recorded in the Old Testament Scriptures. The authors of the New Testament grant us access to two views of these promises: their understanding of the promises, and their understanding of how the individuals to whom the kingdom promises were made understood those promises. My reading of these New Testament writers challenges the view that these authors understood the kingdom promises in the Old Testament in a literal sense and never spiritualized them. 

For the purposes of this book, let us consider two examples. Both Abraham and David received kingdom promises from God. The question that we want to answer concerns their understanding of those promises. Did they spiritualize those promises or did they understand them in natural language (as we define “natural” in the early twenty-first century)—that is, did they take the promises literally? Exactly what did Abraham believe that God was promising him in Genesis 15:18-21? Exactly what did David expect in the promises that God made to him in 2 Samuel 7? What resources do we have to help us resolve this interpretive dispute: the natural (literal) versus a spiritual understanding of the kingdom promise in the Old Testament Scriptures? 

We will begin by surveying the basic information. First, God gave Abraham and his seed a specific promise about a clearly defined piece of real estate—the land bordered by the river of Egypt and the Euphrates (Genesis 15:18-21). We refer to this as the Promised Land. God promised David that his son would establish an eternal kingdom and would sit on the throne of that kingdom (2 Sam. 7:11b-16). Next, we ask how Abraham and David understood their promises. What did they expect as the fulfillment of those promises? When and how were the promises to be fulfilled? How can we discover whether Abraham understood the promise to him in a literal sense (with the occupation of the Promised Land as the fulfillment of the covenant) or if he spiritualized the promise (with the occupation of the land as a type of inheriting heaven)? How do we know what David expected?

To attempt to answer our particular question, we will begin with the biblical text concerning the promise to Abraham. If we allow the Old Testament Scriptures to give us our answers, we likely will embrace a premillennial understanding of Abraham’s and David’s expectations. At the risk of over-simplifying, we will refer to this as a Dispensational hermeneutic. If we use the texts in the New Testament Scriptures that deal with the promise to Abraham we likely will favor the amillennial position. Again, at the risk of over-simplifying, we will call this a Covenant hermeneutic (short for Covenant theology). Currently, New Covenant theology has no clearly defined hermeneutic. Adherents of New Covenant theology have attempted to answer this question by modifying either Covenantal hermeneutics or Dispensational hermeneutics. This book represents an attempt to begin serious work toward establishing New Covenant hermeneutics from the ground up—that is, without beginning with either Covenantal or Dispensational hermeneutics.

I propose that we frame the discussion in terms of the word kingdom instead of the word millennium, as I have done thus far. Next, I propose that we look first for explicit answers within the biblical texts, considering the evidence from both the Old and New Testaments. Some readers might object that the New Testament authors were removed from both Abraham and David by time and culture, and thus what those New Testament writers offer us tells us more about their thought world than it does about the thought world of Abraham and David. Astute readers might point out that we cannot even assume continuity between the thought worlds of Abraham and David. These objections would be serious indeed if we did not have the assurance that the Scriptures, both Hebrew and Greek, are God’s inspired Word to his people. Thus, we can trust what the New Testament authors tell us about Abraham and David. Furthermore, the New Testament writers, although removed from Abraham and David by time and place, are much closer to them than we are. We would be hermeneutically arrogant to privilege our common sense reading of Abraham and David over the New Testament writers’ inspired reading of those men. Therefore, as a tenet of New Covenant hermeneutics, I propose that when the New Testament Scriptures speak to our questions, we allow what it says to be the final word and the word from which we build doctrine.

Having proposed the desirability of examining all of God’s Word for answers to our question, let us refine that question. Do the authors of Scripture who post-date Abraham and David and who refer to the kingdom promise explicitly state that the promises to Abraham and David (1) have been fulfilled, (2) are in the process of being fulfilled, or (3) are awaiting future fulfillment? Is the well-known statement, “The new is in the old concealed and the old is in the new revealed,” correct? Specifically, what do the new covenant Scriptures say about the land promised to Abraham and the eternal kingdom promises to David? According to those Scriptures, exactly how did Abraham and David understand what was being promised to them?

I used to state that if the Old Testament were all of the Scripture to which I had access, I would be a premillennialist. I would believe that the land promised to Abraham had not yet been totally fulfilled and I would believe that David’s kingdom and throne had not yet been established. I would no longer say that. A fellow pastor recently offered proof from the New Testament Scriptures that old covenant believers knew and understood more than we usually credit them with knowing. 

Christ chided Nicodemus (John 3:10), the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:24-27, 44-47), the Pharisees (John 5:39, John 8:56), and his disciples (Acts 1:8 as the answer to Acts 1:6) for failing to interpret their Scriptures (our Old Testament) typologically. Christ expected, at the least, that his audience would understand that all of the Hebrew Scriptures were about him, and that they should read those Scriptures Messianically. His expectation of their reading lens precluded a wooden, literalistic (plain sense everywhere) hermeneutic. From: Chad Bresson

In addition to the New Testament evidence, the Old Testament itself does not allow me to stand by my previous statement. Joshua sees God’s kingdom promises to Abraham as having been fulfilled. Amillennialists use this passage from the Old Testament to support their position. If this is all that God said about the land promise, I would join their ranks. However, such is not the case.

So the LORD gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their ancestors, and they took possession of it and settled there. The LORD gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their ancestors. Not one of their enemies withstood them; the LORD gave all their enemies into their hands. Not one of all the LORD’s good promises to Israel failed; every one was fulfilled. (Joshua 21:43-45, NIV)

These verses are explicit. They specifically state that (1), “the Lord gave Israel ALL the land he had sworn to their ancestors.” Israel literally (2) “took possession of it” (i.e., the Promised Land) and they (3) “settled there” (in the Promised Land). (4) “God gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their ancestors,” and (5), “not one of their enemies withstood them; the Lord gave all of their enemies into their hands.” (6) Verse 45 is an explicit, comprehensive statement, “Not one of all the LORD’s good promises to Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.” According to Joshua, Abraham’s descendants occupied the land as an everlasting possession. This would seem to be the kind of explicit text that we are seeking. Indeed, if this were the final verse in the Scriptures that mentioned the Abrahamic kingdom promise, we would be justified in stating that God has definitely already fulfilled that promise.

The text in Joshua, however, is not the final word. Some of the Old Testament writers who post-date Joshua present the promise as still in effect and awaiting another fulfillment (see 1 Chron. 16:13-18; Psalm 105:6-11; Jer. 32:37-41 as examples). If we ask, “Has God fulfilled every promise to Abraham and his seed, including the land promised in Genesis 15?” The answer, according to Joshua 21, is, “Yes, beyond question.” If we ask, “Do other Old Testament Scriptures, written long after Joshua wrote, clearly hold out the land promise as still future?” The answer again must be, “Yes.” Are we contradicting ourselves? We certainly are not contradicting Scripture since both answers come from Scripture. On the one hand, Scripture says, “The Lord gave Israel ALL the land he had sworn to their ancestors (Joshua 21:43, emphasis mine). On the other hand, long after Joshua died, David reiterated God’s promise and applied it to Israel in conflict with the Philistines over the Promised Land, thus making the promise’s fulfillment salient to the circumstances about which he wrote. 

He remembers his covenant forever, the word he commanded, for a thousand generations, the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac. He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant: To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit. (Psalm 105:8-11, NIV)

We might want to consider this passage as a confirmation of the fulfilled promise: the threat from the Philistines might have caused some Israelites to wonder if God was going to break his promise. David is assuring them that their victory over the Philistines is evidence of God’s faithfulness. They will continue to retain possession (everlasting possession) of the Promised Land precisely because the promise has been fulfilled. But Jeremiah, writing even later, reiterates the promise again and applies it to a captive Israel in exile. Abraham’s offspring are not in possession of the Promised Land; it is no longer their kingdom; it would seem that the “everlasting possession” part of the promise has failed. Jeremiah offers hope by referring to an everlasting covenant whose kingdom promise sounds remarkably like that given to Abraham, yet the fulfillment of this promise is future:

I will make an everlasting covenant with them … and will assuredly plant them in this land … in the territory of Benjamin, in the villages around Jerusalem, in the towns of Judah and in the towns of the hill country, of the western foothills and of the Negev …” (Jer. 32:40, 41, 44, NIV)

This text is not enough to make me a Premillenialist but it is enough to keep me from being an Amillennialists. It is clear that God’s people did not view the promise as over and done with the initial settling of Canaan. Joshua 21:43-45 is not enough to make us believe that there cannot be some future fulfillment, but it is enough to keep us from insisting that God’s people viewed the fulfillment as entirely future.

So how did Abraham understand this promise? When (and if) we know that, we will get help in knowing how to interpret the Old Testament promises concerning the kingdom. While we cannot know everything that Abraham and David believed about their promises, we can know exactly how they understood the essence of the respective covenants that God made with each of them. We know exactly what Abraham understood God was promising in the land promise, and we know exactly what David expected God was going to do in the kingdom promised to him. We know, because the New Testament explicitly states their expectations. Remember our New Covenant hermeneutic: when the New Testament Scriptures speak to our question, we allow that answer to be the final one; the one from which we build doctrine.

Allow me, for the sake of illustration, to offer the following constructed interview with Abraham, conducted in the present.

Interviewer: Abraham, I understand God made a covenant with you and promised to give you a son by Sarah. He reaffirmed that promise when both you and Sarah were far too old to beget or bear children.

Abraham: That is correct. And God kept that promise and miraculously enabled Sarah to conceive and to give birth to a child whom we named Isaac. 

Inter.: God also promised to give you and your seed a specific piece of land where you would eternally dwell in security and safety.

Abr.: That is correct. That promise is recorded in Genesis 15:18-21.

Inter.: Did you and your seed inherit that land in fulfillment of that promise? 

Abr.: Yes. Scripture, in both Joshua 21:43-45 and Hebrews 11:8-11, records the fulfillment of that promise. Joshua said, “the LORD gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their ancestors, and they took possession of it and settled there” (Joshua 21:43). Hebrews 11:9 records how I understood the promise: “[Abraham] made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country.” While actually living in the Promised Land, I felt like a stranger still waiting for a permanent home. I knew God had something far better and greater than Canaan. 

Inter.: While you were making your home in the Promised Land, what were you thinking? Did you view your sojourn in the Promised Land to be the fulfillment of the promise God made to you in Genesis 17:8? Did you understand that you had found what you had been looking forward to by faith in God’s covenant promise?

Abr.: No, not at all. The author of Hebrews accurately conveyed my state of mind and my expectations: By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (Heb. 11:8-10)

Inter.: Let me be sure I understand you. Are you saying that at the very moment you were making your home in the Promised Land, you realized that this land was not the essence of the promise God made to you?

Abr.: That is correct. I knew, by faith, that the true land that God promised to me was a spiritual land and not physical dirt. I was looking past Canaan to a heavenly city. You can read about it in Hebrews 11.

Inter.: From your vantage point of now being in heaven, are you waiting for Messiah to come again and this time to establish Israel, along with yourself, in the Promised Land? If God does not give you and your seed the Promised Land as a permanent possession, will you be disappointed and feel that God was unfaithful to his covenant?

Abr.: You are joking! Or are you? Who in his right mind would trade what every glorified saint, including myself, and all the Jews who died in faith, now enjoy in the true “Promised Land” of heaven for ten thousand lands of Palestine? 

End of interview.

It seems clear from the account in Hebrews that Abraham understood God’s promise in a spiritual sense. While living in the Promised Land, Abraham still considered himself a stranger. He was looking beyond Canaan for a spiritual city whose maker and builder was God. The author of Hebrews clearly spiritualizes God’s promise to Abraham. The question has been legitimately raised concerning exactly how Abraham understood what Hebrews attributes to him. A fellow pastor has given a good answer to that question. 

When the N.T. writer tells us what Abraham believed concerning a city whose foundations were built by God, why should I just assume that Abraham somehow exegeted (spiritualized) that from what was previously given to him? In other words, why can’t I entertain the notion that God simply told him that (Heb. 11:10)? Did Abraham have to spiritualize what was already said, or was he told something extra by God—something Moses didn’t know to write down but the writer of Hebrews was given to write down and give to us? In other words HOW was Abraham made aware of that city without foundations? If you say Abraham spiritualized what was told him, can you prove that? Why couldn’t someone just say God told him about that heavenly city in some other encounter that we weren’t told in Genesis about? After all, in John 8:56 Jesus tells us information that Abraham knew about Christ and rejoiced. Am I to assume that Abraham got that understanding about Christ from exegeting only what he was told in Genesis, or was he shown new revelation—something extra that Genesis doesn’t tell us about specifically? I mean we know Abraham believed in a city without foundations (and rejoicing in Christ). What we’re not told is HOW that knowledge came to him—or do we? From Pastor Mark LaCour

This spiritualization of the Promised Land raises some questions about the way the new covenant authors treated the land promise. Clearly, one of the key components of God’s covenant with Abraham as recorded in the Old Testament was the land described in Genesis 15:18-21. This land promise figured prominently in the reiteration and application of the Abrahamic covenant beyond the initial settlement, as we saw from the Scriptures we cited. How do the authors of the new covenant Scriptures treat the land promise in the light of the Old Testament record? Did Jesus and his apostles hold out to the Israel of their day the same land promise that the Old Testament prophets held out to the Israel of their day? Or did the writers of the New Testament Scriptures point their fellow Jews to the cross and the resurrected Messiah as the blessed hope, or did they point the Jews to some future act of God in which God finally will literally fulfill his covenant promises of the land? These questions address the New Covenant hermeneutic we are trying to establish. They directly apply to our understanding of the relationship between the old and new covenants in their respective teaching about the eternal kingdom promised to Abraham and David.

At this point in my investigation, I have found no New Testament reiteration or application of the land promise as God made it in Genesis 15. The New Testament authors do not refer to the land promise in the way that David or Jeremiah did. The eleventh chapter of Romans may be a debatable section concerning the future conversion of Israel, but no one suggests that Paul mentions the land as part of his argument. We may disagree about the status of the prophecies in the Book of Revelation—whether they are already fulfilled or are awaiting future fulfillment, but no one asserts that the land promise reappears anywhere in the entire Book of the Revelation. The closest thing to a New Testament reiteration of the land promise made to Abraham is Romans 4:13.

It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.

So where do we stand in our attempt to establish a New Covenant hermeneutic? What have we accomplished so far? Several things seem clear. First, the land promise made to Abraham was, at a given point in time, completely fulfilled. Abraham and some of his offspring literally dwelt in the land of promise, for some period of time. We have explicit and unambiguous evidence in Joshua 21:34-45. Some may want to argue that Abraham did not actually possess the land in its entirety, but that is not the way that Joshua viewed it. He states his view emphatically, in both positive and negative terms: “Not one of all the LORD’s good promises to Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.” Remember, those good promises included the Promised Land!

Second, an initial fulfillment does not rule out subsequent fulfillments, either of the same nature or of a complementary nature. The authors of Scripture sometimes view promises as having double fulfillment in time or in essence. We will say more about this when we look at how David understood God’s covenant to establish his kingdom forever and to seat one his sons on that kingdom’s throne. For now, we see the New Testament Scriptures’ spiritualization of Abraham’s understanding of God’s land promise. Abraham took possession of it and settled there, but even while occupying the land, he viewed himself as a stranger because he was looking past Canaan to a heavenly city whose maker and builder was God. He was looking for heaven, not Canaan. This prompts us to ask if Abraham’s understanding of God’s kingdom promise is unique, or is this the uniform understanding of the authors of the New Testament Scriptures as they interpret Old Testament kingdom promises? Does Hebrews 11:8-11 provide a hermeneutical principle for interpreting all kingdom prophesies? 

As more people move into New Covenant theology, we face an increasing need for a clearly articulated New Covenant hermeneutic. Recently, someone raised the question as to whether one can consistently hold to both New Covenant theology and Dispensational theology. New Covenant theology adherents currently include self-identified premillennial and dispensational theologians. The Bunyan Conference has profited from speakers such as Jack Jeffery, David Morris and Fred Zaspel, all of whom espouse some form of premillennialism and some form of dispensationalism . We have no desire to deprive ourselves of what they have to offer.

Should we even try to establish a New Covenant hermeneutic? Would it perhaps be wiser to leave the subject alone and continue to borrow the US military’s slogan, “Don’t ask, don’t tell”? If we discuss the subject, do we run the danger of splitting the camp? There is no question that it is impossible for a Covenant theologian to hold to New Covenant theology. Is the same thing true of dispensationalism? Will a New Covenant hermeneutical articulation result in a fixed either/or position with regard to understanding prophecy, or will our hermeneutic be fluid enough to accommodate different understandings as legitimate and acceptable? I am convinced that an open dialogue concerning the hermeneutical principles that we use to settle questions like continuity/discontinuity is long overdue. Ultimately, we must decide if the issue is one of submission to Scripture or if the biblical treatment of the matter allows for tenuous and conditional positions. If the latter is the case, the question becomes one of intellectual co-existence. 

Andy Wood offers the following quotation in a web article titled “Dispensational Hermeneutics: The Grammatico–Historical Method.”^[4]

The interpreter should, therefore, endeavour to take himself from the present, and to transport himself into the historical position of his author, look through his eyes, note his surroundings, feel with his heart, and catch his emotion. Herein we note the import of the term grammatico-historical interpretation. (Terry, Milton S. Biblical Hermeneutics. NY: Philips and Hunt, 1883; reprint, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976. 231.)

When I studied Abraham and God’s promises to him, I tried to live, breathe, and walk in Abraham’s shoes. When God described the Promised Land so clearly and so specifically (Gen. 15:18-21), it was impossible for me not to take it literally. The problem with this approach, however, was that I took my twentieth-century, culturally-conditioned self with me. I created Abraham in my image, a move that we earlier categorized as an improper hermeneutic. Since we can neither prove nor disprove that my common sense response is ubiquitous (stretching across both time and culture and thus constituting a universal human response), we have to find other ways to ascertain Abraham’s response. When the seeds of New Covenant theology began to take root in my mind, I realized that I could not transport myself into the historical position of Abraham (because I would inevitably project me onto Abraham), but I could use the New Testament to see if it shed light on Abraham’s expectations.

In general, the kind of question we are asking requires grammatico-historical exegesis—bringing out of the text the meaning the writers intended to convey and which they expected their audience to gather. When we want to know what someone thought, surely it is appropriate to consider the nuances of language they used, the genre in which they expressed their ideas, the historical background of their era, and the life setting (the culture) of their faith community. However, when we have New Testament evidence that states explicitly what they thought, we have a surer witness. In the case of Abraham’s expectations, we have that surer witness. Furthermore, we fail to privilege that which God has so graciously provided for us (the surer witness) when we base our interpretation of Abraham’s understanding solely on the Old Testament accounts of Abraham and then make that the basis of interpreting the New Testament teaching on Abraham. What Abraham understood about the land promise is not settled in Genesis, but in the New Testament. Since I have New Testament evidence, I must get a clear understanding of Abraham’s thinking and expectations from the New Testament Scriptures, and then read that back into the Old Testament teaching on Abraham. This kind of reading would be anachronistic (an improper hermeneutic, to be sure) were it not for the doctrine of inspiration, but since we do hold to that doctrine, we can make this kind of reading the first biblical principle of New Covenant hermeneutics. As a first principle, it is necessary and not optional. When we have New Testament evidence about the interpretation of an Old Testament text, we privilege the New Testament and not our common sense reading of that Old Testament passage. It would seem therefore, that New Covenant theology must not interpret Hebrews 11:8-11 with Genesis 15:18-21; rather, it must interpret Genesis 15:18-21 with Hebrews 11:8-11. Or am I missing something?

One last note before we conclude. I have framed this discussion in terms of kingdom, rather than millennium. Our discussions, however, may continue to include the term millennialism. When we talk about millennialism, we are talking about something that, if it happens, will happen after we are long gone. This is why at this point I refuse to make any prophetic view a test of fellowship. If some of the best of believers in the New Testament missed Messiah the first time he came because they did not understand the nature of the prophetic promises in their Scriptures, should we not be careful about how we treat those who understand the details of his second coming differently than we do? I fear that if Christ returned today, some would compare what was happening with their charts, and it would not fit. Let us not be among them of whom it was written, “there standeth one among you whom you know not” (John 1:26).

We have focused primarily on Abraham in this chapter. In the next chapter, we will look at the New Testament evidence about how David understood God’s covenant with him.

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