Back in February of this year we ran a post on millennial lifespans inspired by a Baptist publication I was reading at the time entitled Why Dispensationalism Matters. The subject came up again this morning in Doug Wilson’s weekly letter column, when a reader inquired about Isaiah 65:20. Specifically, he asked for Doug’s postmillennialist take on this: “Will there be a time prior to Christ’s return where the age spans of people are possibly similar to that of people you read about in the early generations of Genesis?”
Good question, and it occurs to me that the differences between the postmillennial and dispensational answers are more extensive than whether the fulfillment of Isaiah 65 will take place prior to Christ’s return or afterward.
Going Downstream
Doug’s reader asked follow-up questions as well, including “Do you think this will be a downstream result of widespread revival? Or maybe a possible medical breakthrough in our understanding of aging? Or maybe both?”
Doug replied to these as follows:
“I believe that in the age foreseen by Isaiah, our lifespans will be considerably longer. In response to your last set of questions, I believe it will be both. As the result of the growth and spread of the Christian faith, there will be great breakthroughs when it comes to aging.”
Now, Doug Wilson doesn’t speak for all postmillennialists, of course, but since his views are generally middle of the road rather than fringe, he likely speaks for many. Indeed, his reading of Isaiah 65 follows logically from both his postmillennialism and his quasi-Replacement Theology. (He believes the Church is Israel, but also believes national Israel has a future in the plans and purposes of God.) Those who hold that we cannot expect the return of the Lord until Christians have transformed the nations and institutions of the world through the preaching of the gospel have to do something with Isaiah 65, and what Doug does is pretty much what we ought to expect from him.
Hope in What Exactly?
However, a quick look at what the passage actually says highlights the stark differences in the dispensational and postmillennial hope, with Isaiah’s reference to increased lifespans in bold:
“ ‘For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for 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, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord, and their descendants with them. Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear. 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,’ says the Lord.”
So then, Isaiah’s statement about increased ages has a specific context, and we want to be attentive to that. Interestingly, Doug takes the prophesied age increases literally. That’s fairly unusual in a prophetic system that takes little else that way. Without further ado, here’s a list of ways proponents of the two views interpret and apply Isaiah’s words differently.
Vive les Différences!
The obvious difference:
- Dispensationalists believe this will happen after the Lord Jesus returns. Postmillennialists believe it will be prior.
Less-obvious differences:
- Dispensationalists believe Isaiah is talking about Jerusalem specifically and perhaps Israel more generally (the repeated words “in it” and the phrase “in all my holy mountain”). Postmillennialists believe he is talking about the entire planet. In their view, presumably, “Jerusalem” means everywhere.
- Dispensationalists believe these blessings are intended primarily for believers in close proximity to the center of Christ’s rule in the midst of his earthly people, which will probably be mostly Jews. If I am reading Doug correctly, he believes these age increases will be a general blessing applicable to the entire human race.
- Premillennial dispensationalists expect believers from the present age to return with Christ to earth in glorified resurrection bodies. As such, these age benefits will be of no use to us; we will have something much better than temporarily extended lifespans going on. Postmillennialists believe their children’s children will still be on earth in standard human bodies, living longer lifespans but dying eventually as everyone currently does.
- Dispensationalists observe the prophesied age increases are consistent with the transformations the Lord Jesus will make to Jerusalem and the surrounding area, which they take literally. Ezekiel 47 speaks of living waters flowing from the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, filling the Dead Sea with fish and making the riverbanks so fertile that the trees growing there will produce leaves that heal. (Yes, we take this literally.) Doug and his postmillennial friends have the “living waters” and “healing” prefiguring the benefits of the gospel in the present age, so they are left to attribute the literal age increases Isaiah mentions to “breakthroughs”, presumably of the scientific sort, resulting, perhaps, from a better and more Christian view of how the universe works.
Waiting for His Son from Heaven
I will not quibble with Doug about how his reading of the passage is inferior to the dispensational view in terms of simply allowing scripture to say what it says without explaining it away. It plainly is. The dispensationalist can let Jerusalem be a city, which it is. The postmillennialist must make a city into a planet. The dispensationalist can let the believing remnant of Israel be Jews and Christians be Christians. The postmillennialist makes us all into homogenous mush. These are eschatological niceties, and they do not affect either party’s enjoyment of scripture, apparently.
I will say the postmillennial hope for the future is weak tea. The dispensationalist is with Christ, ruling in glory and judging angels while the postmillennialist is hoping for science to catch up to theology so he may have a few more years to live. The dispensationalist has the Lord glorified among his people and all Israel’s promises fulfilled, while the postmillennialist has the Lord sitting on his throne in heaven waiting for us to get it right, with Israel’s promises abrogated in part or in whole. However long we dispensationalists have waited and may have to “wait for his Son from heaven”, the postmillennialist expects to wait considerably longer.
These are not arguments for the veracity of the dispensational position, of course. They are simply observations about the implications of accepting one set of truth claims over another. As I have observed elsewhere, postmillennialists are the Sadducees of our present era.
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