A new heavens, and a new…
Land.
I read David Chilton’s The Days of Vengeance in 1989, and it sure surprised me to learn that the word ‘earth’ in the Bible also means ‘land.’ This simple fact alters the scope of John’s Revelation entirely. It is about God’s ending of the Covenant He restored after the Babylonian captivity, and so first century Judah is the main subject. It was a repeat of events in Jeremiah’s day, so let’s backtrack a little…
While the Babylonians were building siege mounds around Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah was in prison (Jeremiah 32). The Lord directed him to purchase some land from his cousin, and he performed this rite before witnesses that included all the Jews who sat in the court of the prison. We know it was an object lesson from God to demonstrate that the nation would be restored to the Land after the captivity. The prophecies of a new covenant in the surrounding chapters, Jeremiah 31 and 33 refer, first and foremost, to this restoration.
The importance of the Land to Israelites included the promise of resurrection. Abraham purchased land in which to bury Sarah. Ruth the Moabitess wanted to be buried there (and she used a ‘Covenant’ name for the Lord). Naaman the Syrian took two mule-loads of soil back to his own country. Also, David Chilton notes that when the Old Testament kingdom of priests was oppressed by the Gentiles, it was often expressed as denying their right to burial in the Land, a pledge of resurrection (Psalm 79).1
In a vision, Ezekiel saw the exhumed bones of Judah’s idolaters that God scattered before the sun, moon and stars (Jeremiah 8), reintegrated into a mighty army after the captivity (Ezekiel 37). They would conquer the Persian empire and in the process reconquer the Promised Land (Ezekiel 38-39; Esther 8-9).
The Land was an integral part of Israel’s identity as the mediator-nation. So Jeremiah’s redemption of Land was a big deal. It was the confirmation of a corporate resurrection.
In the first century, the entire pattern was repeated. Christ as Jeremiah predicted the destruction of Jerusalem. Christ as Ezekiel (the son of man) inspected the Temple for idolatry. And Christ as the human Ark of the Covenant ascended to God. After captivity in Babylon (a syncretised Jerusalem), a mighty army, the church, would become the foundation for a new Jerusalem, a new Temple, and be resurrected to conquer the Land. But there is something out of place.
Instead of a Jeremiah redeeming land, the Jewish Christians sold their lands (Acts 4:34). What, then, were they expecting to inherit as their promise of resurrection? The answer is, a heavenly country (Hebrews 11:16), a Land washed clean by blood and water. Just as the Land disappeared under water in the days of Noah, and under a flood of Babylonian troops at the exile, so those ‘buried’ in Christ – the new Land – would rise up from a Jerusalem flooded by Roman troops (Daniel 9:26) and stand on the crystal sea before God’s throne, just as Jesus had done at His baptism. It would be just like the days of Noah.
In AD70, the mediator-nation, or at least its central government, was relocated to heaven, to the Holy Place before God’s throne. The saints of all previous ages were resurrected to meet their Lord “in the air,” as twelve gates between heaven and land. The waters of the round ’Laver’, the crystal sea, became a square crystal city. It was a new heaven and a new land – a new creation. Since this event, any saint that dies enters the presence of the Lord immediately (Revelation 14:13). Our baptisms picture this event.
Of course, there is a new physical earth to come, and also the second resurrection, but these Land events of the first century prefigure the end of world history.
As David, Christ conquered Jerusalem. Now, as Solomon, He reigns over all the world from His Temple. At the end of history, this round ‘sea’ of nations will also be completed as a ‘square’ Temple, according to the architectural pattern that is ‘coming down from heaven’ (Revelation 21). As God’s Spirit-filled craftsmen (Exodus 35: 30-31), we measure out this pattern upon the world as we commune with Christ and the ascended saints in our weekly worship.
All of which makes modern Palestinian real estate totally irrelevant to the plan of God.
1 David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, p. 282.
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September 16th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Good stuff. But your AD70 presumption eclipses the other resurrections that entered the City.
September 16th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Eric
Good point. It follows the Garden-Land-World pattern. So even that initial resurrection had a head-and-body effect (Garden). Then the first century had a head and body – Christ as firstfruits before the Father, then the firstfruits church in 70.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:33 am
Mike,
Your first century presumptions, particularly AD70 stuff, are events about which you have zero substantiated Revelatory comment (unless perhaps you see one of the NT books making a historical reference). Worse for wear, in being true to your typological thesis (which I think are right on), don’t you need to show a pattern and maybe even a reason for God making these post-Jesus-&-yet-pre-Second-Coming types? How and where do you substantiate their existence? How many are there yet to be seen?
September 17th, 2009 at 7:42 am
Hi Eric
There is a pattern that goes back to early Genesis: Garden, Land, World. See articles here under “Three Resurrections” and also “Trinitarian Judgments”. I hope these are helpful.
Kind regards,
Mike
September 17th, 2009 at 7:45 am
Mike,
I guess I’m trying to compliment you for the big typological picture yet also encourage you to abandon those latent premil ideas that there ever was value in Terra Palestinia. When God said Jerusalem, He never hid our “real” City as the subtext of His meaning. When the bodies of those resurrected entered Jerusalem, it weren’t that real estate our premil friends are so fond of.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:57 am
I think it was the physical city. It was a “liturgical” prefiguring of AD70, just as Jesus’ scapegoating of Judas was.
September 17th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
The odd thing about your attempt to prove that God spoke about AD70 (the one and only historical event relative to us you want to say He did speak about), is that you already have all the types and antitypes you could want available within the historical timeframe which Scripture encompasses, and at the End Time. AD70 is superfluous. [Hey, I don't mind you thinking you've discovered some types in AD70, but they are by nature a couple steps removed from other more solid and authoritative things that are Biblically verifiable -- like a woman's hair.] And the reason your AD70 stuff is not in the same league as End Time references is just because at the End, the End stuff will occur and simultaniously be verified by Mr. Bible Himself. And that’s something you have to wait for to prove about AD70. That’s gotta give you a bit of a let down, waiting centuries for authoritative validation. (Let alone trying to explain about those pesky stones which are still left upon one another.)
September 17th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I’m sorry Eric – I don’t understand your position.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Mike, let me assume that you find at least one specific Biblical prophecy foretelling of AD70. Let me also assume you find some specific Biblical prophecies foretelling of an end time to history as we know it. Unlike the End Times, AD70 is history to you and me. But AD70 was not history at the time of any Bible authorship. Besides the End Times, what other prophecies do you find cited in your Bible that have not yet occurred? Or does AD70 stand alone in that regard? Is it the only pre-End Time event prophesied in your book?
September 18th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Eric
Matthew 23-25 specifically foretell the Jewish war (and immediate surrounding events). This is expanded upon in Revelation 1-19 (LAND).
After this first victory for the church, Revelation 20 briefly describes the current age before the final judgment and physical restoration (WORLD).
That is interpretation. But in application, all of the principles that applied to the Land now apply to the world. There are still beasts and harlots, just not any able to corrupt the centre of worship because that is now in heaven. The Old Covenant Temple is gone.
September 18th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
You know, Mike, saying that the putrid and ungodly Roman slaughter of Jews in AD70 provided some savory sense of Christian victory, might justifiably smack of gross antisemitism to many.
But you’ve confirmed that the ONLY prophecied event you presume to know of that stands without interBiblical confirmation is this AD70 thing. For all other prophecies & historical types, you’ve got Bible surrounding those. Yet one of the tenets you use to validate your other interpretations like your Garden-Land-World discovery, is that you’ve got Bible to back it up.
For AD70, of course, you’ve got nothing looking back. “Matthew 23-25 specifically foretell the Jewish war …” — really? Says who? “Well it’s obvious” I hear you say. Hmmm, is that your hermenuetic for your other type-antitype constructions — obviousness to Mike?
No, on ALL other constructions, you use Scripture to prove them. “But Eric, knock-knock-hello!, Scripture stopped before AD70, so there ain’t gonna be any backward-looking verses to expound on and prove that AD70 is a Biblical-cited type!” Exactly! So you have this singular, living piece of history that you find to be such a critical, pivotal anchor in our understanding of God’s plan, yes? But unlike all other events in Salvation history, God chose this one to occur after He closed the authoritative Record, the only tool He could and had used to enlighten us with His take on every other seminal event. And why would He put this one critical event outside the bounds of backward-looking Scriptural exposition?
You can and have discovered tons of historical events inside Biblical history which, after He applied His unique hermeneutic subsequent to the event, gave us a perspective we never could have got on our own. And you don’t go beyond that with respect to ANY of those events. But now with this AD70 thing, you’ve got all kinds of understandings about it that you’ve had to imply based on your earier begging of it as what Matt 23-25 is talking about.
I’m just disappointed that someone like you with nice insights found within Scripture about Scripture, has taken such a liking to a mythical post Christian “signpost.” Again, I’m guessing it’s a premil holdover.
September 18th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Eric
After all that, I’m STILL not sure where you are coming from. Are you saying the AD70 fulfills all Scripture, or that AD70 fulfills no Scripture. Please present your case clearly.
The fulfilment of most of Revelation is outside the bounds of Scripture because an event has to happen “after” the Scripture that predicted it. The Bible was completed before the Old Covenant passed away.
Regards AD70, Ezekiel was about the coming destruction of Jerusalem, and the death and resurrection of Israel.
Revelation follows exactly the same structure as Ezekiel. The book has the same purpose: the end of an Old Covenant and inauguration of a New one.
Regards antisemitism, I recommend James Jordan’s excellent article here: http://www.preteristarchive.com/Modern/1991_jordan_future-israel.html
Thanks for your comments.
September 19th, 2009 at 12:22 am
Thanks Mike, for the exchange. You’re a trooper to stick it through.
My base is that in one huge sense the Old Covenant did not “pass away” or die, because those old things were types given to teach us about Christ. So they were fulfilled in Him. Isaiah and Moses spoke of Christ, not some doomed system. Circumcision and the Temple were about Him, so baptism and His body are the “modern day” correlation.
Now yes, those Old Testament types have passed away and been crucified in the sense that they were also types about what it means to be trapped in a death of our own making. Adam and Eve put us in a living hell, a thing about which the picture of repeated sacrifices (for example) was given to “us” / Jews to typify. So when Christ was crucified once and for all, He killed that old condition. Nevertheless, the condition for those without Christ remains a living and current “old covenant” they are doomed to live out.
So when you say the Scripture was completed before the Old Testament passed away — I think you hit on the crux of our difference. The Old Testament (types of our doom) “passed away” when Christ killed them in Himself and then burst awake again like Gandolf the white, victoriously alive in triumph and then levitated in shimmering glory to approving Father. For those in Him, there ain’t no doom left after that, my friend. That’s why Stephen, connected as he was to Christ, looked up and saw EVERYTHING in place — which drove the “old covenant” trapped Jews to their frenzy. Stephen did not preach about some future victory — He saw the risen Christ, and it doesn’t get more victorious than that.
AD70 is superfluous. AD70 fulfills no Scripture in any specific sense — other than there are lots of AD70′s occurring all around us every day that show the repeated truth that God is working His purpose out. 9/11 is an AD70. Nobody, not even you, can name anything substantive from that even that you don’t already have in the history circumscribed intraBible times. “But without AD70, you wouldn’t …” — what? The first Christian victory???? Christ’s resurrection, Stephen’s confident look into Jesus’ face, Paul’s huddle with the pastors on the shoreline — you need more than that, Mike?
September 19th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Eric
Within the first century structure, Christ’s death was Passover and the destruction of Jerusalem was Atonement. That is the interpretation of the text. The application is what you are referring to in other events. I believe the Reformers were quite right to identify Papal Rome as ‘a’ harlot, but wrong to identify her as ‘the’ harlot. It was exactly the same kind of compromise that the Herods made, but not the event Jesus and John were predicting.
The destruction of the Temple and Old Covenant worship was not superfluous. It was a major event in the history of the church. It vindicated Christ as a true prophet.
September 19th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Thanks for the kind exchange, Mike. Keep on!