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Keith Mathison and the Biblical Time Statements pt. 4
by
Don K. Preston, D. Div
This article appeared in the 2021 Summer issue of Fulfilled! Magazine
This is our third in a series of responses to Keith Mathison’s attempt to negate the time indicators of the imminent parousia and the end of the age in the New Testament corpus.
As we embark on our fourth
installment in our response to Keith Mathison, there is
something else the reader should know about Mathison’s
eschatology and his view of time statements. Commenting on
Hebrews 11-12, Mathison says this about the subject of
“Zion” in Hebrews 12:
Christians are now experiencing
the fulfillment of the eschatological hopes of Israel (Keith
Mathison, Age to Age: The Unfolding of Biblical
Eschatology, Phillipsburg, NJ; P & R Publishing 2009,
625).
Mathison chronicles the promises listed in Hebrews
12:21f and insists:
“Under the New Covenant we
have come to Mt. Zion. We have come to the
heavenly Jerusalem. We have come to the church of the
firstborn. We have come to Jesus, the mediator of this
glorious New Covenant.... That which the Old Testament
believers looked for in faith has come, and they have now
received what was promised” (Postmillennialism: An
Eschatology of Hope, 1999, 135; his emphasis).
However, in the very next
paragraph Mathison affirms, “the fullness of the blessing is
yet future, because we await the consummation.”
Just think about that. The
eschatological hope of Israel, according to Hebrews 11 was
the heavenly New Jerusalem whose builder and maker is God.
What is fascinating—perhaps more than a little revealing—is
that included in the eschatological hope delineated in
Hebrews 11 was “the better resurrection”! Yet, Mathison did
not list that as part of the eschatological hope that
“Christians are now experiencing.” Does Mathison expect us
to understand the terminology—the time statement—of “now”
and “has come”? How does he determine the actual temporal
proximity of “now” and “has come” yet then try to convince
us that “at hand,” “soon,” “shortly” and “quickly” are to be
ignored?
How can Mathison (consistently)
emphasize the “now” of the blessings, honoring the temporal
statements, but then insist that “the fullness of the
blessing is yet future, because we await the consummation”?
There are no New Testament passages that, properly
understood, would ever suggest, hint, or imply that the
“fullness of the blessings” were not to come for two
millennia.
It appears that on the one hand
Mathison uses time words to emphasize what Christians have
NOW. He even explains how those promises were once far
off from the patriarchs, but again, emphasizes that they
are now given to the saints. But, after emphasizing the
temporal contrast between the Old and New Covenant saints,
he immediately turns around and does his best to negate and
mitigate the inspired texts of the imminence of the end.
More from Mathison
In his Postmillennialism: An
Eschatology of Hope, (Phillipsburg, NJ; P & R
Publishing, 1999, 167), Mathison has this to say about time
statements:
Telescoping - telescoping occurs
when the prophet describes events that are now known to be
widely separated in time, but does so without giving any
indication that they are so separated. For example, Daniel
11-12.
The problem with this quote/claim
is that it is based on presuppositional theology. Notice
that Mathison says, “the prophet describes events that are
now known to be widely separated in time, but does so
without giving any indication that they are so separated.”
What does Mathison mean by claiming, “It is now known” that
the fulfillments of the prophecies were “widely separated in
time”? What he means by this is that since his concept of
the nature of the fulfillment of Daniel was not fulfilled
imminently, he therefore “knows” that the ultimate
fulfillment lies in some other time, far removed from the
textually stated time frame.
What is to be noted about his
reference to Daniel 11-12 is that the background for the
vision is given in chapter 10 (to which Mathison
conveniently omits any reference). There Daniel was told:
In the third year of Cyrus king
of Persia a message was revealed to Daniel, whose name was
called Belteshazzar. The message was true, but the
appointed time was long; and he understood the message,
and had understanding of the vision.” Then in verse 14
Daniel was told by the angel: “Now I have come to make you
understand what will happen to your people in the latter
days, for the vision refers to many days yet to come” (v.
14).
Thus, twice at the introduction of the vision that extended all the way through Daniel 12, the prophet was told that the events were NOT NEAR, but in fact “refers to many days yet to come.” Now, notice that the only thing that was truly near Daniels’ day was the receiving of the vision—the consummation of the vision was not near, and the angel clearly said so. We have the right to ask therefore, just exactly where in that vision, that was emphatically said to extend over a long period of time, do we get the idea that some things were near but in fact they were far off. Mathison is patently grasping at straws. His objection is overruled.
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(Ephesians 4:15)