We have noted how premillennialists claim that Old Testament prophecy is literal and predicts events in our daily newspapers and our immediate future.

There are some enormous difficulties in this view. We are going to look now at one of those difficulties and consider the shaky ground on which a fundamental of premillennial thought is based.

The Restoration of Israel

The kingdom of Israel had once been a mighty empire in the time of king David and his son Solomon. In the time of many of the prophets, there was only a remnant of the kingdom left. However, there was hope among the prophets of a restoration.

Here is a small sample of their prophecies...

• "And my servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd..." (Eze 37:24).
• "The sons of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king" (Hosea 3:5).
• "I will raise up the fallen booth of David, wall up its breaches, raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old... declares the Lord" (Amos, 9:11-12).
• The prophet Nathan had conveyed this promise from God to king David: "I will raise up your descendant after you... and I will establish his kingdom... your throne will be established forever" (2Sm 7:12-17).

The hero of Israel who would bring about this restoration was the Messiah (Dan 9:25). We are more familiar with the word "Christ" which is the Greek translation of Messiah (Jhn 1: 41). Within the scope of this discussion it is not a matter for argument that this Messiah turned out to be Jesus of Nazareth. All Christians know and believe this.

Did Jesus Fail?

When Jesus came, however, he did not set up David’s throne again in Jerusalem. If people thought that Jesus would conquer the world in a political or material sense, then they were wrong. If they thought he would establish an earthly kingdom of the same nature as the kingdom of David and Solomon, they were mistaken. It didn't happen.

So did Jesus bring these prophecies to fulfillment, or did he fail?

• Did Jesus really become a king like David?
• Did he really restore Israel?
• Or was he a king without a kingdom?
• Jesus had taught his disciples to pray, "Thy kingdom come". Did their prayer fail?

Ater Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension, Peter preached on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. The kind of kingdom Peter and other disciples might previously have been expecting did not come. However Peter seems sure that the prophecies had not failed. He quotes Nathan’s prophecy to David, and one of David’s own prophecies.

Peter says, "David was a prophet, and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants upon his throne. He looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of Christ... exalted to the right hand of God" (Acts 2:25-36).

We rejoice in this fact that Jesus ascended into heaven. But wasn't he meant to restore the kingdom to Israel and rule the world from Jerusalem on the throne of David? It was all very well for him to go away into heaven, but what of the kingdom prophecies he was supposed to fulfill?

Two Answers

Here one has a clear choice. Either Jesus set up a different kind of kingdom --a heavenly or spiritual kingdom not of this world-- or else he postponed the setting up of his kingdom until another time.

There are really only two ways you can go when confronted by the fact that a kingdom which the prophets said would come did not come as a political and material empire.

A spiritual kingdom

One way is to say that the prophecies were never meant to be taken in an earthly and political sense. They were to be spiritually fulfilled in greater heavenly things. If they described the kingdom in material terms, they were speaking figuratively and symbolically.

Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world" (Jhn 18:36) . He set up a heavenly and spiritual kingdom. He sat down on a heavenly throne (of which David’s throne on earth had been a "type" or figure, a shadow). The kingdom which Jesus established is his church, and its members have been "translated from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son" (Col 1:13).

Or a 2000 year postponement

The other way is to say that God found it necessary to set aside his plan A, so to speak. Plan A was to fulfill the kingdom prophecies with an earthly kingdom, but that was not possible yet, so plan B came into effect instead. Christ postponed the setting up of his kingdom until his second coming. He suspended the fulfillment of the kingdom prophecies and established his church as an interim measure.

The premillennialist opts for the second position. The premillennialist says Jesus did not fulfil the kingdom prophecies the first time he came, so we should expect him to fulfill them at his second coming.

A Fundamental of Premillennialism

The premillennialist holds to the idea that there is a "parenthesis In Prophecy". To put it another way, the clock of prophecy was stopped much as the countdown of a space shuttle is stopped if something unforseen goes wrong and then resumed at an appropriate time.

Premillennialists say that, at the crucifixion of Christ, God stopped the prophetic clock. It has been stopped until now, but will be started up again in this generation.

• Did God stop the prophetic clock when they crucified his Son?
• Did he insert a 2000 year gap into history, a gap quite unforseen in the Old Testament?
• Has prophecy been holding its breath for two millennia, waiting to resume the countdown?
• Do prophecies that should have been fulfilled in the first century still remain unfulfilled in the 21st century?

The idea that God stopped the prophetic clock and inserted a long parenthesis in history, is fundamental to premillennialism. Without that parenthesis, the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy cannot be brought into our generation. Without that parenthesis you would have Old Testament prophecy mostly fulfilled in the first century instead of the twenty-first century. There would be no grounds for the complex end-time teachings of premillennialism.

The Difficulty of the Theory

The difficulty with the stopped clock view is very simple. The Old Testament prophets nowhere even hint that Jesus would fail to establish his kingdom at his first coming. If he failed it was a failure unforseen.

While the Old Testament forsees the death and resurrection of Christ and the establishment of his kingdom, it nowhere foresees...

• a gap of nearly 2000 years between his resurrection and his reign,
• the church being set up as a substitute for the kingdom,
• the postponement of the restored kingdom,
• God’s predetermined counsel being frustrated.

Nor do the apostles of Christ seem to take such a view. They say nothing of a postponement of God’s plan. They speak only of its fulfillment. Many places in the New Testament speak of the kingdom as a then present reality.

Our next lesson is optional. It goes into the matter of Daniel’s 70 weeks and the decrees to rebuild Jerusalem. If you feel like reading about that, it will supplement what you have learned in this lesson. But you may prefer to skip it for now.

Yes, go to "Daniel’s Seventy Weeks"
No, skip to "A Flit Thru the Future"

Home | Topics | List | Next