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Adam, Noah, and the Kingdom:
The Covenants of Genesis and Consistent Eschatology

by Rev. Ralph Allan Smith


Conclusion

In the light of this brief covenantal survey, we conclude that both amillennialism and premillennialism fail to offer an eschatology that truly permeates and dominates the message of the entire Bible. Their eschatologies are not an integral aspect of the whole of Biblical revelation, for they cannot take into account the progress of the covenants in Christ, the promises of Christ that His Church will conquer the world, or the meaning of the cross as the undefeatable means for the Church's conquest. Eschatology and the Christian life are not united in the amillennial and premillennial viewpoints. Christian growth through obedience and suffering are not seen as part of God's way of working in the world to bring about the victory of the message of the cross and resurrection. The resurrected Christ is not seen as King of kings and Lord of lords now, but as waiting for some future date when "all authority in heaven and on earth" will then be granted to Him.

Only the postmillennial vision of history conforms to an integrated Biblical view of the progress of the covenants and the victory of the Messiah. And it does this without transforming victory into garish triumphalism of the sort that boasts of conquest but flees from the humble obedience and suffering of the covenant. The postmillennial vision is the vision of a seed falling into the ground and dying — not in order to rot (amillennialism?), but in order to bear fruit, fruit that will remain and multiply through covenantal love and obedience (John 15:1-16). In postmillennialism, eschatology, individual sanctification, church growth and discipline, and the progress of the covenant are all united in the resurrected Christ and His kingdom.

 



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