Christians should work to fulfill the Dominion Mandate
because "the Second Coming of Christ" already happened
and the Messiah is now reigning and we are now living
in the New Heavens and New Earth.
The "Last Adam" has restored His people
to the privileged position of the "First Adam."
The first commandment God gave to man is the Dominion Mandate:
Genesis 1:26-28
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
This mandate included agriculture, zoology, and all other fields of human endeavor that are necessary to build the City of God. This meant man was to mine the earth for gold, to create money, to engage in global commerce and trade, increasing our standard of living. In other words, man was given the command to transform the Garden of Eden into a global New Jerusalem.
"Eschatology" is the study of "last things."
Some people say "eschatology" is the study of future things, but that's not exactly accurate, and it assumes you are a futurist rather than a preterist.
"Eschat-ology" comes from two Greek words. Any word ending in "-ology" is the study of [something], or a logical presentation (doctrine) of the facts about [something]:
Eschatology comes from the Greek word ἔσχατον (éschaton), neuter singular of ἔσχατος (éschatos). The word means “last.” Here are some passages that contain the Greek word "eschatos."
Notice that in all of these verses, the "last" days were in the past, not in our future. These "last" things were taking place in the last days of the Old Covenant, which were the first days of the New Covenant, in the years between A.D. 30 and A.D. 70. Jesus destroyed the Old Covenant world of the temple in "the Great Tribulation" of A.D. 68-70.
"Preterism" is a form of Christian Eschatology, like "premillennialism" or "postmillennialism." The word "preterism" comes from the Latin word for "past." Preterism is the opposite of "futurism." Preterism is the belief that all these "last" things predicted in the Bible happened in the past. There is no verse in the Bible that speaks of a "last days" event in our future. The last days of the Old Covenant are in our past. The "second coming of Christ" happened when He destroyed Jerusalem.
It happened when Jesus said it would:
Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He shall come in His own glory, and in His Father's, and of the holy angels; and then He shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom with power.
Matthew 16:27-28; Mark 8:38-9:1; Luke 9:26-2729 "Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the land will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
34 Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.
Matthew 2423 But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.
Matthew 10
Preterists believe what Jesus said. Futurists are embarrassed by these words of Jesus. The revered Christian apologist and Oxford Professor C.S. Lewis said,
“He said in so many words, 'this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.' And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else. This is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible."
If Jesus said His Second Coming would occur before A.D. 70, we ought to believe Him.
It is the pervasive teaching of the New Testament that Jesus was coming soon. On almost every page, we are told that Jesus would end the old age and begin the new before those who were His eye-witnesses died.
Preterists believe that in the last days of the Old Covenant, Jesus began to reign as the promised Messiah, and inaugurated the "New Heavens and the New Earth," sometimes referred to as "the millennium."
I understand your question. I used to think the way you do. Obviously, saying Jesus is the Messiah right now and we are living in the New Heavens and New Earth right now is the most controversial proposition on planet earth. Jews certainly don't believe that Jesus is now reigning as Messiah. And the overwhelming majority of people who call themselves Christians believe that the Jews rejected Jesus as the Christ, therefore Jesus could only be their "savior." Jesus will not begin reigning as the Christ until He comes again in the future.
I believe that if Isaiah and Micah and the Old Testament prophets could travel through time to our day and look back on the last 2,000 years of global Christian expansion, they would be profoundly grateful for all that Christ the Messiah has done to bring peace and prosperity to the world. It is the task of the Body of Christ to continue building the New Jerusalem.
This requires a profound worldview shift, because we are victims of educational malpractice and media brainwashing.
The "church fathers" were wrong. Even the Apostles, like Peter, were, at one time, wrong:
But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”
Matthew 16:23
The Apostle Paul said of Peter:
11 Now when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed;
13 And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy.
14 they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel
Galatians 2
The "church fathers" are, at many points, an offense to King Jesus. One Reformed scholar has cleverly spoken of "the church fathers" as "the church babies." He says:
The true Fathers of the Church are Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Jeremiah, Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John, and the other Fathers in the Bible. These men, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, created the apostolic deposit from which the Church always grows.
The men who came after them, in the first and second and third centuries, are not Church Fathers but Church Babies. This is how we should regard Ignatius, Irenaeus, Basil, the Gregories, and yes, even Augustine. [I]n terms of the corporate biography of the Church, they lived in the infant stage and their great accomplishments were only the beginning of that corporate biography. We appreciate what the Holy Spirit did with them, and the theological accomplishments they made, but to say that they understood everything and laid everything out definitively would be grotesque, ludicrous, and idiotic.
We may think that because these men lived right after the apostles, they must have known a lot. Remarkably, this is not the case. Anyone who reads the Bible, climaxing in the New Testament, and then turns to the "apostolic fathers" of the second century, is amazed at how little these men seem to have known. The Epistle of Barnabas, for instance, comments on the laws in Leviticus, but completely misinterprets them, following not Paul but the Jewish Letter of Aristeas. It is clear that there is some significant break in continuity between the apostles and these men. What accounts for this? I can only suggest that the harvest of the first-fruit saints in the years before AD 70, which seems to be spoken of in Revelation 14, created this historical discontinuity.
The "church fathers" were infected with Jewish premillennialism and Greco-Roman statism. Premillennialists -- and most amillennialists and post-millennialists are infected with the basic error of premillennialism -- deny that building the City of God, the New Jerusalem, is the responsibility of the Body of Christ in this age -- not something that Christ will hand to the saints on a silver platter in the future. And this work of building is accomplished by living and preaching the Gospel, not by the sword. The "good news" is that the entire planet will increasingly "obey the Gospel" and be blessed (Galatians 3:8).
I've decided to follow Jesus and the Bible rather than popes and bishops 1800 years ago.
That's what I've been told. Is "the Christian Faith" determined by the Bible, or by fallible men in the infancy of Christian history?
Here is my credo. I think I'm "orthodox," despite the fact that I disagree with the mainstream on how to interpret verses which I think the original authors intended to point to events in the last days of the Old Covenant.
Yes, I've been told that. I think that's insane. I'm not even a Christian even though I believe everything the Creeds teach about Christ?
Certainly no atheist would ever listen to me. Atheist Bertrand Russell, in his book Why I Am Not A Christian, discredits the inspiration of the New Testament based on the failed prediction of Christ and the Apostles:
I am concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels . . . and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, He certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at the time. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says, for instance, "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come." Then He says, "There are some standing here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes into His kingdom"; and there are a lot of places where it is quite clear that He believed that His second coming would happen during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of his earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of his moral teaching. [1]
Russell is correct when he says that much of the New Testament was based on the belief that the Kingdom and end of the age were "at hand." If Christ and the Apostles were teaching the imminent destruction of planet earth and the inauguration of the "eternal state," then they were clearly mistaken.
New Testament readers were anticipating the end of the old and the beginning of "the New Heavens and the New Earth" (2 Peter 3). Incredible, miraculous, unprecedented things
Either they happened, or the New Testament writers (and those who believed them)
This is a very serious issue, and many atheists have recognized what's at stake.
If you're a Christian and you realize what's at stake, you should read the links above.
There are enough links on this page to give you all the information you need to make a Godly and informed decision.
The last time I spoke with David Chilton on the phone was before he became a Full Preterist. He admitted that there are no verses in the Bible that teach a future (for us) "second coming." But, he said, he nevertheless believed the doctrine of a future second coming because (these are his words) "Holy Mother the Church has taught the doctrine for 2,000 years." At this point, Chilton, who came out of the California "Jesus People" movement, and at one time preached in zorries and a Hawaiian shirt, was wearing a clerical collar. He soon became a full preterist. I don't know how his doctrine of the institutional church changed. He died prematurely, without our having another conversation.
The reason people believe in the doctrine of a future second coming is because "Holy Mother the Church" teaches the idea. Not because the Bible does. It ultimately and always boils down to the Bible vs. the Institutional Church.
Futurists believe the Holy Spirit has led the Church to this position.
By "Church" they really mean "clergy."
They point most specifically to the "creeds."
As Christ would have us to be certainly persuaded that there shall be a day of judgment, ... to deter all men from sin ... so will He have that day unknown to men, that they may shake off all carnal security, and be always watchful, because they know not at what hour the Lord will come; and may be ever prepared to say, Come Lord Jesus, come quickly, Amen
No postmillennialist can affirm this. Not in 1648 or in 2018. Christ's coming is AFTER the "millennium" (or "golden age," or whatever you call a time of maximum gospel prosperity). If you think I'm crazy to believe that the prophets would see the supernatural reign of Christ in 2018, why would you think that Christ could come at any moment, without creating those Messianic conditions across the globe? The Westminster Standards are only apparently or superficially postmillennial, just as they are only apparently Theonomic. The verses cited by the Confession were intended by their first-century authors to be speaking of a first-century event, to be interpreted by their original readers in an imminently futurist manner, and by us in a preteristic manner.Gary North's son-in-law, who now heads Gary DeMar's American Vision organization, has repudiated capital punishment for blasphemy and other "first table" violations.
http://americanvision.org/14114/what-is-not-theonomy
He writes:
Under Justinian’s Code all heretics were to be suppressed, their buildings taken from them, and their books banned, confiscated, and burned. If they met in private houses, their houses would be confiscated and given to the Catholic Church. Teachers of false doctrines were given the death penalty. One important law (as we shall see later) specifically aimed at the enduring Donatists decreed that anyone merely rebaptizing a person (and the one inducing him to do so) would receive the death penalty.
This is evil.
The Donatists were accused of raising -- not lowering -- moral standards. They said that sacraments — performed by clergy who capitulated under the persecution of Diocletian (303-305) and handed over copies of the Bible to be burned — were invalid.
"The holy catholic church" has stood for confiscating property and even the killing of those who wanted to raise the moral standards of the church. That does not sound like an organization I want to follow. How many optimillennialist anarchists did the "holy catholic church" suppress in the earliest years of Christian history? Is the "institutional church" any more friendly to anarcho-capitalism today?
Jesus is also the only "Prime Minister" we need.
Our point is that Jesus is the -- THE -- the ONLY -- legitimate king, prince, ruler, president, prime minister, governor, legislator, judge, and potentate. If we simply practice what we preach -- by obeying His commandments -- we will have a peaceful, orderly, and prosperous society, supernaturally orchestrated by the "invisible hand" of the divine providence of Jesus the Christ. All other earthly kings, princes, rulers, presidents, prime ministers, governors, legislators, judges, and potentates are illegitimate usurpers and anti-Christ.