Back in November of last year, our own Immanuel Can recommended a relatively short study guide from Regular Baptist Press entitled Why Dispensationalism Matters. The guide is based on a commentary by George Gunn and edited by Alex Bauman, and I’ve been working my own way through it during the last week in between trips outside to shovel the most recent 3-4 inches of snow piling up around my car.
Having just finished it, let me add my recommendation to IC’s.
Why Dispensationalism Matters is a clear, orthodox, scriptural presentation of the dispensational position in language anyone can manage, with a heavy emphasis on showing the reader in which ways his understanding of scripture will be deficient if he opts for the increasingly popular and less literal alternative to dispensationalism in one of its various forms. Dispensationalism lets Israel be Israel and the Church be the Church, and never the twain shall merge or conflate until the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven from God. A dispensational view frees up the Old Testament prophets to say their piece to the Jews and Israelites of their day in something other than code. Apart from a smattering of typos, I’ve nothing bad to say about the book.
The Future Kingdom
Well, almost nothing. Is there a “but” coming? Of course there is, or I’d let IC’s post (written before he finished the book) speak for itself. It’s a minor niggle, but one I think worth mentioning. Lesson 11 is called “Dispensationalism and the Future Kingdom”, and it raises an issue I’ve never given serious thought to until now. It concerns a passage in Isaiah that the author of the guide and I both take to be millennial:
“No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.”
Based on this verse, the writer (I’m not sure whether this is coming from Gunn or Bauman) says this about the millennial lifespan of Israelites who survive the tribulation, and their children:
“Unlike the church, the Old Testament believers, and the tribulation believers, these will still be living in their mortal bodies. They will have children born to them in the Kingdom … these will not die but will remain alive throughout the entire one thousand years of the messianic Kingdom.”
Then, concerning people from the Gentile nations of the millennium who survive the judgment of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, he writes:
“They will all be saved at the beginning of the Millennium. As time progresses, however, they will bear children who will have sin natures. Those who do not receive Jesus as Savior will die in their sin at one hundred years of age. This appears to be what Isaiah is saying … On the other hand, all Gentiles who trust in Jesus as Savior will live throughout the entirety of the one thousand years, like those in the nation of Israel.”
Now, as much as I like the book and would definitely recommend it, this is one point where it simply does not make its case effectively.
What is Isaiah Saying?
That either Israelites or Gentiles of any generation during the millennial reign of Christ will live for 1,000 years or more in ordinary fallen earthly bodies, even under the exceptional conditions of the period, is at best a supposition, no more. I do not think it’s what Isaiah is saying.
It’s not that I doubt men and women born with a sin nature could potentially survive that long in absolutely optimal conditions: Methuselah made it to 969 prior to the Flood, and others came close. But even in Methuselah’s case there was an upper limit. He reached it, he died, and shortly thereafter came the Flood.
Nor am I comfortable with the distinction the writer makes between Gentiles and Jews with respect to lifespan. Why will all children born to millennial Israelites “remain alive throughout the entire one thousand years”, while children of Gentiles with sin natures who fail to put their faith in Christ will die at one hundred? Why are the Gentile “next generation” faced with a choice Israelite children of the same age are not? Does the writer suppose that proximity to Christ and his throne confers automatic faith and heart-submission to Christ as Lord? Surely not. It didn’t work for Satan or his followers, it didn’t work for Judas, and it didn’t work for many other Jews of his generation.
A rebellious heart is a rebellious heart wherever it may be found, in millennial Jerusalem or halfway round the world. The “sinner” in Israel will find proximity to the King no protection from the long-term effects of a curse yet to be completely lifted.
Jerusalem a Joy
I’m not counter-speculating here. The context of Isaiah’s statement that “the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed” is not the Gentile nations but the holy city of Jerusalem itself, the dwelling place of the Lord. Here’s what leads up to Isaiah’s remarkable prophecy:
“Behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days …”
Note the words “in Jerusalem” and “in it”. The residents of Jerusalem, presumably mostly Israelite, will be long-lived and exuberantly healthy, but as mortal as Adam, Seth or Noah.
Moreover, there is no biblical reason to suppose they will all be humbly in submission to Christ like their parents, or else how would the “sinner” a hundred years old — remember, he’s almost surely an Israelite in Isaiah — be considered accursed?
No, it seems to me Jew and Gentile alike during the millennial reign will have to decide if they love the Lord Jesus and want to submit to his rule internally as well as externally.
A Thought
Here’s a thought: I’m not entirely confident the quasi-Edenic conditions in Jerusalem will prevail elsewhere on the planet during the thousand-year reign, at least not to precisely the same degree. Consider this statement at the end of Isaiah 65: “The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.” Unless the prophet is using “mountain” as a euphemism for the entire planet, he may be saying that Jerusalem will be a sort of locus of millennial curse-reversal, and the effects of Christ’s presence will spread out from there to influence, but perhaps not entirely transform, the rest of the world. The blessings of millennial Jerusalem will be unique in the world. As Isaiah says, “I create Jerusalem to be a joy.” That would certainly explain the need for the “new heaven and new earth” of Revelation 21 and the post-millennial worldwide rebellion when Satan is released to deceive the nations.
In any case, the average lifespan of millennial Gentiles in nations ten thousand miles from Jerusalem is not a subject Isaiah addresses at all, and we cannot say anything definitive about it. They may be the same as Jewish lifespans, they may be slightly shorter, or they may be much the same as in the present day. What is surely the case is that they will vary according to way people live, what they choose to eat and the stresses and strains they put on their bodies.
Choice, Not Imposition
Throughout history, the Lord has always opted to allow men and women to choose how they wanted to conduct themselves, at least within reasonable limitations. There will surely be much less obesity and substance abuse during the millennial reign, but I don’t see any reason they would disappear entirely.
What we can say with confidence is that even during the millennium, owning Christ as Lord and Savior will be a choice, not an imposition. Righteousness will be administered perfectly and enforced justly on the world. It will certainly not be a blessing conferred automatically on one nation above all others by virtue of Jewish genetics.
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