One of the highlights for me in the recent McDurmon/Preston debate was when Joel opened up his affirmation of a future physical resurrection with an argument from Exodus 3; which is where Jesus took the Sadducees in defending the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. (Lk 20) I have expounded on this text here.
In a nutshell, the argument runs like this: Abraham was promised land. Abraham never inherited the land. Abraham died. Problem? No. God will raise Abraham from the dead and place him on the land for an everlasting inheritance, as fulfillment of that promise.
Having not seen any hyperpreterists adequately deal with this argument over the past year, i was anxious to hear Don Preston’s response…pathetic. He went off on a rabbit trail about the distinctions between the present age and age to come; threw in a few straw-men regarding Joel’s understanding of “restoring Eden”; completely avoided the fact that both Paul and Jesus widened the land promise to incorporate the entire earth; and then ignorantly claimed that such a teaching is “dispensationalism”.
Of course, all Don has to do for most hyperpreterists is throw the “dispensationalism” tag on something – no matter how wrong he is – and that is enough for naive hyperpreterists to step back in horror: “Nooooo! Dispensationalism! Bad. Bad. Run away! Run away!”
Well, during my studies today i have stumbled upon yet another quote that reveals that Don Preston and ilk have no idea what they are talking about. The following is from Anthony Hoekema’s classic work, The Bible and the Future; the standard amillennial textbook in Reformed colleges and seminaries for over 20 years: {pgs 277-279}
“In Genesis 15 and 17 we read about the formal establishment of the covenant of grace with Abraham and his seed. In establishing his covenant with Abraham God was temporarily narrowing the scope of the covenant of grace in order to prepare for an ultimate widening of the covenant. In the promise of Genesis 3.15 God had announced that he was graciously inclined toward man in spite of man’s fall into sin. This gracious inclination was defined in the widest possible terms, as being directed toward “the seed of the woman.” In formally establishing his covenant with Abraham, however, God temporarily introduced a particularizing phase of the covenant of grace — with Abraham and his physical descendants — in order that these physical descendants of Abraham might be a blessing to all the nations (see Gen. 12.3; 22.18). The particularistic phase of the covenant of grace with Abraham, therefore, was followed in the New Testament era by the widening of the scope of the covenant, which is now no longer restricted to Israel, but includes people from all the nations of the earth.
In the matter of the inheritance of the land, we have a similar situation: a temporary narrowing of the promise is followed by a later widening. In other words, just as the people of God in the Old Testament era were restricted mostly to Israelites but in the New Testament era are gathered from all the nations, so in Old Testament times the inheritance is expanded to include the entire earth.
In Genesis 17.8 we read the following promise to Abraham: “And I will give to you, and to your descendants (or seed, ASV) after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession….” Note that God promised to give the land of Canaan not just to Abraham’s descendants but also to Abraham himself. Yet Abraham never owned as much as a square foot of ground in the land of Canaan (cf. Acts 7.5) — except for the burial cave which he had to purchase from the Hittites (see Gen. 23). What, now, was Abraham’s attitude with respect to this promise of the inheritance of the land of Canaan, which was never fulfilled during his own lifetime? We get an answer to this question from the book of Hebrews. In chapter 11, verses 9-10, we read, “By faith he [Abraham] sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” By “the city which has foundations” we are to understand the holy city or the new Jerusalem which will be found on the new earth. Abraham, in other words, looked forward to the new earth as the real fulfillment of the inheritance which had been promised him — and so did the other patriarchs. The fact that the patriarchs did so is cited by the author of Hebrews as an evidence of their faith: “These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city” (11.13-16).
From the fourth chapter of Hebrews we learn that the earthly land of Canaan was a type of the eternal sabbath rest which remains for the people of God. Israelites in the wilderness who failed to enter the rest of the land of Canaan because of unbelief and disobedience are compared in this chapter to people who because of similar disobedience fail to enter into the “sabbath rest” (v. 9) which awaits us in the life to come. Canaan, therefore, was not an end in itself; it pointed forward to the new earth which was to come. From Galatians 3.29, further, we learn that if we are Christ’s, we are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise. All of us who are united to Christ by faith, therefore, are in this wider sense the seed of Abraham. And the promise of which we are heirs must include the promise of the land.
When, in the light of this New Testament expansion of Old Testament thought, we reread Genesis 17.8, we see in it now a promise of the ultimate everlasting possession by all the people of God — all those who are in the widest sense of the word the seed of Abraham — of that new earth of which Canaan was only a type. Thus the promise of the inheritance of the land has meaning for all believers today. To limit the future thrust of this promise to Abraham, as dispensationalists do, to the possession of the land of Palestine by believing Jews during the millennium is greatly to diminish the meaning of this promise.
Patrick Fairbairn summarizes what the inheritance of Canaan meant under the following three points:
- The earthly Canaan was never designed by God, nor could it from the first have been understood by his people, to be the ultimate and proper inheritance which they were to occupy; things having been spoken and hoped for concerning it, which plainly could not be realized within the bounds of Canaan, nor on the earth at all as at present constituted.
- The inheritance, in its full and proper sense, was one which could be enjoyed only by those who had become children of the resurrection, themselves fully redeemed in soul and body from the effects and consequences of sin.
- The occupation of the earthly Canaan by the natural seed of Abraham, in its grand and ultimate design, was a type of the occupation by the redeemed church of her destined inheritance of glory.”
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I’ll end the quote there, considering that i am typing all of this out and my fingers are getting tired. lol. Hoekema goes on from this point to explain that the arrival of a “new earth” does not imply that the present earth will be “annihilated”. “New” simply means “new” in regards to “nature or in quality.” In other words, there is continuity between the present earth and the new earth in its fullness. I point this out because the whole “annihilation” bit is yet another straw-man that is thrown out there by hyperpreterists. Hoekema distinguished between neos and kainos long before any hyperpreterist started prancing around with their supposed ‘discovery’.
And of course, the connection between the widened land promise and physical resurrection is obvious. So no…this is not a “dispensationalist” argument. This appears to be an argument fundamental to orthodox Christianity, period. Don and ilk may want to edumacate themselves.