Reformed Baptist or Presbyterian ESCHATOLOGY?

Covenant Theology and the Question of Eschatology

What are your thoughts? Because earlier you said, you know, we're starting to dip into a departure in covenant theology with kind of the Reformed Baptist paradigm and Presbyterians. And so, if we are understanding, you know, in the Old Testament, these are historical covenants, right, that God made with Adam, that he made with Noah, Abraham, David.

If we understand that these are different covenants, right, and the new covenant is so much more glorious that's being promised for, and they lived under different covenants. Now, I've thought about this, and please help me because I could be way wrong, and I'm sure I'll get some interesting feedback for this, but it seems like the Presbyterian theology that sees, you know, the Old Testament saints under the covenant of grace, well, they've been given a kingdom back then with temporal tools, temporal ways to wage war, and they've been given temporal laws, right, to theocratic Israel, that we see a lot of that carrying over into kind of a theonomic paradigm within a, what I would argue for a more consistent Presbyterian covenant theology, which might work better with post-millennialism with a theonomic framework.

So, is there any consistency with Presbyterians and post-millennialism and theonomy? What do you think?

Salvation by Faith Alone and the New Birth

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're exactly right. That's why I want my, like I said at the beginning, I want my eschatology and all my theology to be consistent with the gospel, and the gospel is for salvation is by faith and faith alone.

You have to be born again, and in the Old Testament economy, you didn't have to be born again to be a part of the Old Testament people. It was just by natural birth, kind of like for me to be an American, I just need to be born here.

Now, there's other ways to become an American. I could go through the citizenship process. There's other ways to become a Jew in the Old Testament. You could go through some form of circumcision and citizenship process, and that's what, you know, the Judaizers wanted Christians to do.

You got to go through the citizenship process. You have to be circumcised. Paul says, no, no, circumcision is of no avail. It's by faith and faith alone, but the Old Testament was a theocracy, and this is why when Jesus preached on the Sermon on the Mount, you have heard it say, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

You have to have a fifth set of theocracy. If you're mixing earthly, civil, political rule with Christianity, then you have to have eye for eye, tooth for a tooth, but Jesus says there's no longer eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but now we turn the other cheek because my kingdom, the kingdom of God, up until the return of Jesus Christ, is not of this world.

It's not physical. It's not based upon genetics, and so Presbyterians and Dispensational, they make the same basic flaw. They add a non-regenerate membership into God's covenant people, and the nature of the new covenant, which was promised in Ezekiel, I will make a new covenant not like these old covenants.

The old covenant they broke. The old covenant they failed, and the reason that these covenants were faulty is because it demanded obedience, and these covenant people could not obey, but I'll make a new one, and they all shall know me from the least to greatest.

So every new covenant member is a believer and been bought by the blood of Jesus Christ and been born again, and that's a huge, huge distinction that makes Baptist.

Covenant theology different than Presbyterian covenant theology. It's not a mixed covenant, right? It's a covenant of grace, the new covenant, whose mediator cannot fail to intercede and save his, right?

Fullness forgiven, past, present, future. So here's a question that maybe sounds a little dicey, but like for those Reformed Baptist covenant theologians that are trying to press for a post-millennial framework, can you put your finger on the inconsistency, maybe, with trying.

The Kingdom of God Is Not Advanced by Moral Reform

To rectify those two things? Yeah, I mean, again, it's a blending of the theocracy of the Old Testament with the spiritual kingdom, the nature of the kingdom of the new covenant. It's blending those together, and I think that you're going to have all kinds of inconsistencies and things that just, like oil and water, don't mix.

A mixed covenant membership of believers and unbelievers do not mix. The kingdom of God is not advanced through making moral citizens of unbelievers who go to hell. You're either in the kingdom of God or you're in the kingdom of Satan.

There's not this kingdom of God that's a mixture of the kingdom of Satan and kingdom of God. It's one or the other. It's light or darkness. Light has no fellowship with darkness. It's this great antithesis, and so what Christ is doing is he is calling out a particular people for himself, redeeming them out of the kingdom of darkness, out of this fallen world, this cursed world, and he's preparing them for a non-cursed, glorified world with a glorified body with perfection.

That's the true kingdom, and we're not yet fully—we'll get to this in a minute—but we're not fully seeing the kingdom realized. The kingdom is not going to be completed until Christ comes back, and then it's eternal, and it's sinless, and it's eternal sinless, and it's completely without any wickedness at all.

But we see the beginning of that kingdom. We see the first fruits of that kingdom by the coming of the Holy Spirit and by the fruits of the Spirit and by all the fruits of the new birth, and so without new birth, you don't have any of the kingdom of God.

Genetics and law-keeping and circumcision and legislation and political protest, marches and rallies and all that have common grace, and I'm for it as an American citizen to have common grace, and I'm for Christianity having a wonderful impact upon my society.

I'm for clean water and planting some good trees and feeding the poor. All that, may we do that along the way, but let's not confuse feeding the poor in a better moral society, which we all long for and we should seek for and pray for, and we should vote, and we should do what we can, and our Christianity is going to help us, guide us in how we try to bring common grace and the good of society around us.

But don't mix the advancement or at least the restraining of evil, and that's all it is. It's not a conversion of evil to good. It's just a restraining of evil. Let's not confuse the restraining of evil with the new birth or restraining of evil with regeneration and sanctification and the kingdom of God.

These are totally different spheres and different things.