Living in the Last Days

If you travel in evangelical circles, you might hear language especially today that says, “We’re living in the last days.”  Those words, “last days,” occur eight times in the King James Version.  These are two prominent usages:

2 Timothy 3:1, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.”

2 Peter 3:3, :”Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts.”

“Last days” in the Bible is not very specific.  When the Apostle Peter uses the words in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, he refers them to a partial fulfillment now over 2,000 years ago:

Acts 2:17, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”

The phrase, “living in the last days,” did not start appearing in written material until the middle of the nineteenth century, when men would write something like the following:

There are features of the last days of the last times, and they are characteristic of these days and these times; we are therefore, living in the last days of the last times, and, consequently, expect the speedy appearance of the coming of the Son of Man.

This was from an article, “Elements of Prophetical Interpretation,” by J. W. Brooks in a book, The Literalist, published in 1841.  As popularly used, most refer these “last days” to a seemingly very short time before the rapture from the earth of the saints.

A Vision of the Reign of God on Earth

Many, many and from various factions oppose the literal approach to biblical prophecy and that everyone presently abides in the last days as such.  They reject the concept that the world will degenerate until the return of Christ.  If that be the case, political activism is of little point.  On the other hand, if persistent human effort might bring the reign of God on earth, then reasons exist for lobbying, campaigning, protesting — violent or non-violent, community organizing, and political action.

Early Roman Catholicism by envisioning the church as New Testament Israel also saw the church as the kingdom of God on earth.  Instead of circumcision as the entrance requirement to the kingdom, water baptism became that, a New Testament circumcision.  A false form of millennialism, this position says the church is already God’s kingdom with a view toward its ultimate perfection on earth.  Roman Catholic theologian Augustine in AD413 wrote in his City of God:

The Church is already now the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of heaven.  Accordingly, even now His saints reign with Him. . . . It is then of this kingdom militant, in which conflict with the enemy is still maintained, and war carried on with warring lusts, or government laid upon them as they yield, until we come to that most peaceful kingdom in which we shall reign without an enemy.

Spiritualizing Old Testament Israel and finding in its Old Testament prophecies a fulfillment in the New Testament church subscribes to advocation of positions of power for realizing God’s kingdom on earth.  According to this eschatological position, the church inherits Old Testament mandates for domination over the earth.

Postmillennial Liberation and Dominion Theologies

Mirroring Viewpoints

The left and the right both compete for power with the divine charge of liberation on the left and dominion on the right.  These two mirroring viewpoints easily find support for the replacement of Israel.  This might also adapt into justifiable eradication with an underlying disposition of antisemitism.  Both acquire their ordination from a form of postmillennialism and a hermeneutic of spiritualization and allegorization, the latter the rationalization for Roman Catholicism.

The left and the right become strange bedfellows with relationship to Israel under the same umbrella of eschatology.  Palestinian Liberation Theology buttresses a decolonization theme and advocates Palestinian freedom “from the river to the sea.”  Thomas Ice writes then concerning postmillennial reconstructionism:

The danger lies in their misunderstanding of God’s plan concerning the future of the nation Israel. Reconstructionists advocate the replacement of Old Testament Israel with the church, often called the “New Israel.” They believe that Israel does not have a future different from any other nation.

Corrupted Views of Israel

Ice continues:

While Reconstructionists do believe that individual Jews will be converted to Christ in mass in the future, almost none of them believe that national Israel has a future and thus the Church has completely taken over the promises of national Israel. In contrast to the eventual faithfulness and empowerment by the Holy Spirit of the Church, Reconstructionist David Chilton said that “ethnic Israel was excommunicated for its apostasy and will never again be God’s Kingdom.”

John MacArthur also tied together these two theological ideologies, saying:

There is another kind of theology that’s existing today, it’s called Liberation Theology. It is a form of theology that says that the church is to take dominion over the institutions of the world. That’s another form of dominion theology or kingdom theology. And what it basically says is that the church’s mandate is to take over the institutions of the world. That’s the liberation theology side. And what dominion theology says is that we are to take over the powers of darkness.

Dovetailing of Leftist and Rightist Values

Harvey Cox writes in an article in The Atlantic:

By far the most striking discovery I made . . . was the remarkable similarity between the rhetoric . . . of liberation theology. Both (postmillennial dominion theology and liberation theology) focus on continuing the ministry and work of Jesus. Both place the concept of the Kingdom of God, albeit interpreted quite differently, at the center of their respective theologies.

Leftist and rightist values dovetail around eschatological belief.  Neither provide a true and real solution for the present or for the future.  Instead of depending on a plain reading of the text of scripture, they spiritualize it and read into it a false vision of the future.  This then reflects on a relationship with Israel.

Judaizers followed the Apostle Paul into his churches after his first missionary journey and attempted to turn the churches of Galatia into a form of New Testament Israel.  They removed required distinctions between the church and Israel to make the church into Israel.  This confused the real solution for man’s problems found only in Jesus Christ.  It corrupted the church.  A kind of Judaizing continues perverting the church through its insidious false eschatological vision for the world.  In so doing, it also assaults Israel and annuls the promises God will still fulfill for this chosen nation.