| The Centrality of Israel is another argument that I think about, but hasn't been raised in either camp. I admit that this argument runs the risk of making the Bible appeal parochial and less relevant to the modern age. But a holistic theonomic approach to "The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" can still reconstruct modern societies and pagan cultures. In a nutshell, the argument is this: the Bible is mainly about Israel, and the New Testament is mainly about the end of Israel. |
| The book of Isaiah (just as an example) contains prophecies that span centuries, against empires that span the Eastern Hemisphere, and include prophecies against empires that didn't even exist at that time. The New Testament is like just one of Isaiah's prophecies. It's about one empire: Israel. It takes about 18 hours to read the entire New Testament. It's possible that Isaiah might have spent that much time standing in the public square delivering just one of his major prophecies, though only a fraction of his speech was recorded and preserved in the canon (cp. John 21:25). |
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So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the Word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. {4} Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"(Jonah 3:3-4) |
| The New Testament is about Israel in the same way the book of Jonah is about Ninevah, and it is about one single generation -- "the Terminal Generation" -- in the same way the book of Jonah is about 40 days in the history of Ninevah. It may be safe to say that Jonah, going throughout Ninevah, uttered much more prophetic content than is found in the book of Jonah, and if it were all recorded would fill a book the size of the entire New Testament. I'm beginning to see the New Testament more like the book of Jonah than the book of Isaiah. The New Testament is looking more and more focused upon the "terminal generation," and not a sweeping panoramic view of empires extending thousands of years into the future. The New Testament is urgently about the imminent end of the Old Testament, the end of Israel, and the beginning of a new creation, a new Body encompassing the old Israel and all the nations. This all happened in the first century, though the implications are still being lived out today.* Russell and the "hyper" preterists, however, have convinced me that the burden of the New Testament is Israel and the end of the Old Covenant, and "all those things" took place in the first century, in "that generation." |
| * (I believe we're in "the New Heavens and the New Earth" [Isaiah 65; 2 Peter 3] but that prophecy speaks of generation after generation building homes, cultivating fields, extending lifespans, and so forth, so to say that 2 Peter 3 was "fulfilled in the first century" is not to deny we have a long way to go in exercising dominion over the earth, a process that Gentry admits could go on for tens of thousands of years before "the Second Coming" [HSHD, 336].) |
| These views are being explicated in new websites, www.HeavenNow.org and www.ChristianizeTheWorld.com. |