Beale & McAtee on the unity of Scripture

Matthew 21:41 They said to Him, “He will destroy those wicked men miserably, and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render to him the fruits in their seasons.”

41 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

‘The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone.
This was the Lord’s doing,
And it is marvelous in our eyes’?[j]

43 “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it. 44 And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.”

Some commentators have rightly noticed that this second statement about a stone also has an OT background, this time from Daniel 2:34-35: “A stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue … and crushed [it],” and it “became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away.” The statue in Daniel represented the evil world empires that oppress God’s people, and the stone symbolized God’s Kingdom of Israel that would destroy and judge these unbelieving Kingdoms. Now, unbelieving Israel as become identified with pagan Kingdoms and is portrayed as being judged along with them by also being ‘broken to pieces’ and ‘scattered like dust.’

Thus Jesus sees Israel as becoming indistinguishable from the ungodly nations and accordingly judged in the very same way. That is, Israel as a nation will no longer exist as God’s true covenant people, just as the pagan nations to be judged at the eschaton will no loner exist. Remember also that the ‘stone’ of Daniel, after smashing the colossus, representing the evil kingdoms, ‘became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.’ Jesus identifies himself with Daniel’s stone that smashes the ungodly nations, which also includes here Israel, which is seen as being allied with these nations. That an aspect of the new form of the kingdom in this passage is the temple, centered in both Jesus and a new ‘people producing fruit,’ is further indicated by the fact that the parable of the vineyard in Is. 57, to which Jesus alludes in the directly preceding context, was interpreted by early Judaism to represent Israel’s temple.

That Jesus identifies himself with the cornerstone of the new temple is pointed to further by how in Dan. 2 the stone that struck the statue and then ‘filled the earth’ represented the foundation stone of the temple. That foundation stone grew and grew until it expanded to cover the entire the earth. A further indication that Israel identified itself with the nations instead of God’s true Israel, Jesus, is seen in Pilate’s question to the Jews, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ to which the chief priests responded, ‘We have no King but Caesar’ [John 19:15]. This develops the earlier statement by the Jewish crowd addressing Pilate, ‘if you release this man [Jesus], you are no friend of Caesar’ (John 19:12). In the parallel in Mt. 27:25 the Jews responded to Caesar saying, ‘ His blood be on us and our children,’ another radical expression of disassociating themselves from Jesus as the center of the newly emerging Israel, kingdom, and temple.

G. K. Beale
A New Testament Theology — 682

How can Beale remain amillennial and write material like this? Like Vos before him, Beale recognizes the “now, not yet” hermeneutic and constantly properly refers to the distinction between the Kingdom inaugurated and the Kingdom consummated. Yet, for Beale, again, like Vos before him always tends to front load the “not yet” in his hermeneutic over the “now.” I think this amillennial front loading of the “now” over the “not yet” is a Redemptive historical mistake. It was in the Old Testament where we find the front loading of the “not yet” over the “now,” in the coming of the Kingdom. However, with the coming of Christ who Himself is the Kingdom, the Redemptive-Historical anticipation has been realized so that with the new and better covenant the “now” of the “already, now, not-yet” Redemptive-Historical hermeneutic is front-loaded so that we anticipate that the inaugurated Kingdom that came with Christ goes from nowness unto nowness. This is the hermeneutical basis for postmillennialism. The front loading of the “not yet” has passed with the coming of Christ and with Christ’s victory we read the Scripture with the “now,” not consummated but indeed front loaded.

Also note that geo-political Israel is of no eschatological import to God as it has been overthrown, never to rise again. Geo-political Israel has absolutely zero claims to God’s promises of the OT. God has crushed Israel, divorced Israel, and served Israel divorce papers in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Indeed, I might go so far as to say that those who see Israel as remaining God’s chosen people, are trying to reverse God’s judgment and so are enemies of God and His people.

R2K & The Cultural Mandate

In R2K theology there is a severing between the work of Christ as the one who fulfilled the failed work of the 1st Adam and the work of God’s people who walk in terms of the 2nd Adam’s victory. For R2K theology, Christ filled Adam’s cultural mandate and therefore the mandate to have dominion and to be fruitful and multiply no longer applies to God’s people and it is positively error (sin) for God’s people to act as if the cultural mandate is still in force. R2K spiritualizes the cultural mandate and insists it is filled in Christ who took dominion in His Redemptive work and who is fruitful and multiplying as the Church grows through the ages. For R2K being fruitful and multiplying in relation to the Cultural Mandate happens only when people are converted by the Gospel Message.

Now, we can quite agree that there is truth in the idea that when people are converted the cultural mandate is being fulfilled. However, all because there is a Spiritual component to fulfillment doesn’t mean that there does not remain a corporeal fulfillment of the cultural mandate. To suggest that believers need not be concerned with taking Dominion since Christ has taken Dominion is to create a vacuum in the temporal realm that becomes filled by other Christ hating religions who will take Dominion in the names of their respective gods. To refuse to enter into the cultural mandate work of Dominion as faithful stewards unto Christ is to spiritualize the Crown Rights of King Jesus to the point that He is King in absentia, King in name only, and a King who rules in name only.

All of this is, as I said earlier, to sever the work of Christ from the work of God’s people. It is because Christ fulfilled the cultural mandate that we seek to walk in terms of that fulfillment. Christ’s Kingdom is an inaugurated Kingdom where His inaugurated corporeal Dominion is exercised concretely via the obedience of His people as given by the poured out Holy Spirit. To suggest that God’s people need not take dominion in the public square, as faithful stewards unto Christ, is to so Spiritualize Biblical Christianity as to make it effete and as a salt that has lost its savor.

Also, such a theology guarantees defeat in space and time history. Such a defeat is necessary to R2K militant amillennial theology. Amillennial theology insists that at the end of History the Church has been defeated by God’s foes. R2K theology guarantees that will happen as they argue for a theology of withdrawal, retreat, and defeat in the public square. The only problem here is that Christ isn’t going to return upon the space and time diminution of the Church as created by R2K disobedience. As such it is conceivable that R2K could successfully deliberately create the climate for the Church’s decline as it surrenders the public square to the enemies of God who take dominion in the names of their Gods. Yet, even if R2K is successful in this surrender maneuver they will be sorely disappointed when their expected eschatology doesn’t find Jesus sweeping in on the clouds to rescue them from the disaster they have created by their retreat-ism.

Progressivism and Chaos

As the Progressive is a hater of the God of the Bible, he, by necessity, constantly advocates a return to chaos as the means of societal regeneration. If there is no God to introduce His legislated order then all that is left is chaos as a means to achieve order. The belief of epistemologically self conscious leftists is that from chaos order comes, and so in order to pursue a golden age what is required is chaos and destruction.

All of this explains the pursuit of economic chaos with all the bailouts and stimulus programs. We must destroy the country economically so that a brighter economic future might be born. This explains the attempt at marriage chaos with the sanctioning sodomite marriage. This explains the attempt to overturn the 2nd amendment since weapons in the hands of the citizenry frustrate the revolutionists pursuit of order by means of chaos.

The progressive (Revolutionists) are committed to chaos at every turn and this is so because they are at war with a God who is a God of order. When they can introduce chaos into the temporal realm, it is an attempt to overturn the eternal realm.

For the Marxist progressive Revolutionists out of chaos order comes. For the Biblical Christian, the God of the Bible brings order out of chaos. Because of this antithesis the Progressive must destroy the Christian and the Christian must frustrate the progressive at every turn.

Satan came to kill, steal and destroy and the Progressive does his Lord’s work when he seeks to return to chaos.

Two Major Faults Of The US Constitution

“To return then, to the American Constitutional Order and System itself, we recognize that its two components had a touching point. Both the proponents of Locke’s natural rights thesis and those who perpetuated that which remained of the holy commonwealth idea believed that government should be limited in power. That was their point of agreement.

Dr. Glenn R. Martin
By far the greatest scholar ever to teach at Indiana Wesleyan University

Martin’s point of course was that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were dualistic documents that could be interpreted either through the lens of Enlightenment Rationalism or through the lens of Biblical Christianity, depending on one’s beginning presuppositions.

Of course the failures in the US Constitution, from a Biblical perspective, was the failure to explicitly recognized Jesus Christ as the Sovereign of the Nation and the failure to require a explicitly Christian religious oath. On the failure of the Oath part it can be argued that since the founders viewed the office holding of Federal officers to be likely drawn from those who were previously holders of political office at the State level there would be no necessity to require a religious oath since the charters and constitutions at the Colonial level were explicitly Christian in so many cases, and did require oaths or professions of Christianity.

A brief overview quickly makes the point,

The New Jersey Constitution of 1776 restricted public office to all but Protestants by its religious test/oath.

The Delaware Constitution of 1776 demanded an acceptance of the Trinity by its religious test/oath.

The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 had a similar test/oath.

The Maryland Constitution of 1776 had such a test/oath.

The North Carolina Constitution of 1776 had a test/oath that restricted all but Protestants from public office.

The Georgia Constitution of 1777 used an oath/test to screen out all but Protestants.

The Vermont state charter/constitution of 1777 echoed the Pennsylvania Constitution regarding a test/oath.

The South Carolina Constitution of 1778 had such a test/oath allowing only Protestants to hold office.

The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 and New Hampshire Constitution of 1784 restricted such office holders to Protestants.

Only Virginia and New York did not have such religious tests/oaths during this time period

Still, the fact that the US Constitution did not include something similar to what we find above makes it a derelict document and the absence of a Christian oath and the acknowledgement of the Lordship of Jesus Christ is one reason that explains the evaporation of our undoubted catholic Christian faith in this country and the corresponding rise of malevolent faiths and behaviors in this nation.

As to why we have surrendered the joint conviction with the Rationalists of the idea of limited government this can be explained by the simple fact that if man will not bow to the God of the Bible and His Christ, who alone has unlimited government, then man will seek to vest unlimited government somewhere else; most usually the State. Americans have abandoned God and in abandoning God they have abandoned His design for Biblical limited Government and the result is Statist Tyranny.

Only repentance and a owning of our sin of rebellion against God can return us to God’s favor and provide solution for Statist tyranny. Men who are in bondage to sin, can never build social orders characterized by liberty.

When Men Forget God

“More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Templeton Address

Do you want to know why this nation is considering legalizing Sodomy? Why we have fallen prey to the chimera that is Statist Death care? Why are we even discussing the seizing of our guns?

The answer is simple. Men have forgotten God. When men forget God then a vacuum is created that is filled by godless man. Godless man, by definition, is a demon and he will seek to destroy all social order that is related to the social order of the true God.

Men have forgotten God and in doing so have become beasts. Man can not forget God without losing his own humanity, and yet fallen man would rather embrace living in the ugly environs of the beasts, where nature is red in tooth and claw, then remember God and His Christ.

Men have forgotten God and so they enter into the war of all against all as each individual man seeks to exercise his godhood as over against the godhood of his neighbor. When men forget God it becomes me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel. When men forget God, all men seek to be god and so all men seek to destroy one another. Gods cannot abide competition.

Men have forgotten God and so they shred all God ordained design and distinction in favor of a world where all colors bleed into one. In forgetting God, man seeks to integrate himself downward into the void since integrating upwards into God’s design is no longer an option since men have forgotten God.

Men have forgotten God and so they lose even the idea of the author in literature. The idea of an author who must be considered in understanding a given piece of literature must be rejected since such an understanding hints to much at the idea that there is an Author whose intent must be considered when it comes to life. When men forget God, there is not only no God and no God intent, there are no authors and no authorial intent. The disappearance of God requires the disappearance of the Author.

When men forget God all is chaos and we return to old chaos and dark night. When men forget God they turn to chaos to find order. Order can no more be birthed from chaos then beauty can be birthed out of Cultural Marxism.

When men forget God, life has no value, sex has no intimacy, death has no solution, thought has no meaning, joy has no reference point, and meaning is illusory.

When men forget God, sexually transmitted diseases become as common as abortion, integrity becomes as rare as a virgin on her wedding night, and the bodies start piling up.

When men forget God.