Kingdom Come (Book Review)

Kingdom Come by Sam Storms
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Kingdom Come” is written by Sam Storms and is an explanation of the amillennialist position of eschatology. I would describe this book more as a critique of pre-millennialism and dispensationalism, and a good one too. In fact, it is because of this, that I would describe amillennialism as being a negative eschatology. Not negative in an emotional sense (although that could be said too), but rather negative in the sense that amillennialism appears to be that which the other positions are not. The other two main positions (pre-millennialism and post-millennialism) are positive in their assertions as to what they believe. Amillennialism seems to be more or less the vacuum which is produced when the assertions of the other two positions are rejected. It is as though the amillennialist says, “Well I don’t believe in this (pre), and I don’t believe in that (post), so what I’m left with is the other (a).

I think my favourite chapter of the book is the one on post-millennialism. I would even point to that chapter as a good defence of post-milleniallism. Reading that chapter leads me to conclude that Storms is like all amillennialists: an agnostic post-millennialist. He writes: “I want to believe that postmillennialism is true. The notion of a progressive and ultimate triumph of the gospel within history itself such that when Jesus returns he finds a truly Christianized cosmos is profoundly appealing. But as of the publication of this book, I am not yet convinced. I remain an amillennialist.” (page 384)

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Bible Theology Basics

Here are some excellent articles by James Jordan regarding the basics of bible theology. This is not systematic theology. This is looking at the bible and letting it teach us directly what it is saying. Although the word ‘basic’ is used, you might be surprised at what you’ll learn from reading these articles.

There are eight articles to be read in succession. Here are the links…

Biblical Theology Basics #1

Biblical Theology Basics #2

Biblical Theology Basics #3

Biblical Theology Basics #4

Biblical Theology Basics #5

Biblical Theology Basics #6

Biblical Theology Basics #7

Biblical Theology Basics #8

The Vindication of Jesus Christ ~ Brief Book Review

This is the best book I could recommend on Revelation. It is short and simple, but it may be confusing to anyone who is unfamiliar with eschatology and Jordan’s point of view on it.

Basically, Jordan teaches that Revelation describes events that happened in the first century, between AD 30 and AD 70. The climactic judgement/visitation of Jesus on the Jews happened in AD 70 with the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem which was also the end of the old world creation. We are now living in the new creation.

Jordan focuses on the symbols of Revelation and how they all come from the Old Testament. For example, 666 comes straight out of the book of 1 Kings.

Jordan also points out how the old creation was governed by angels, while the new is governed by the Church.

Jordan gave a series of lectures on Revelation which consists of 204 lectures and a 300+ page notebook. It can be found here.

The book can be found here.

Don’t Put the Symbol Before the Horse

In Genesis, the creation account talks about the passage of days before the sun was created. There was a light time and a dark time: a full day.

Now, when God did create the sun, He did not then spin the earth, wait to see how long it took to spin once, and then decide to make a day 24 hours long. God determined that a day would be 24 hours long before He made the first day. The sun and the rotation of the earth were set to conform to what God had already determined. We need to be sure we don’t get that backward.

It is the same with biblical symbolism. Biblical symbols are not like Forest Gump’s box of chocolates. Forest wanted to describe life, so he chose an object close at hand and used it. The object he chose was not created to be a symbol for life, but it was able to be used as such with some imagination. Biblical symbols, however, are specifically created to represent something else that already exists.

An example is marriage. When God wanted to describe the relationship between Christ and the Church, He did not say, “The relationship between Christ and the Church is like marriage,” in a ‘Forest Gump box of chocolates’ kind of way. No, God created marriage because the concept of the relationship between Christ and the Church already existed, and marriage is an image of that pre-existing reality. This is the first reason why Christians oppose gay marriage. Jesus isn’t marrying another Jesus, therefore men don’t marry men — the created symbol has to follow what it’s imaging of the Creator.

When a man is opposed to the idea of a woman being a pastor, it is not because he is a male chauvinist. Rather, it is because he believes that gender matters. Gender is symbolic; not in a ‘box of chocolates’ kind of way, but in a ‘something pre-exists about God and this is an image of that’ kind of way. A man standing before his congregation is a symbol of Christ standing before His bride. A man protecting his church is a symbol of Christ protecting His wife. A woman can not do that; not because she isn’t smart enough, or talented enough, but because she doesn’t fit the symbol. The ‘Beauty and the Beast’ story would quickly lose its appeal if the beauty decided to switch roles with the beast — the symbols wouldn’t match.

Bread and wine exist because they image pre-existing things about God. Baptism, circumcision, the temple, birds, trees, clouds, stars, and even people themselves are symbols following after something which was real before any of them ever existed. Biblical symbols are directly connected to that which they image. Gump’s box of chocolates is not.

Symbols matter. They are not interchangeable. God sets them in place, and we benefit when we follow them and use them as He intended.

Power Religion (aka 666)

In Deuteronomy 17 God gave instructions to the Israelites about their future king. God said that the king must never multiply horses for himself, not multiply wives for himself, and not multiply gold for himself.

To not multiply wives and gold means God did not want the heart of the king to be drawn away from God.

To not multiply horses means that God never intended Israel to be a conquering empire. They were to be a nation of priests to the Gentile nations. The surrounding Gentile nations were to protect Israel. God’s people always had a “Gentile sponsor” — someone to support and protect them. For Abraham it was Melchizedek, for Joseph’s family (the Hebrews) it was Egypt, for Moses and the people (now called Israel) it was Jethro, For David and Solomon it was Hiram of Tyre, and for the post-exile Jews it was Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome (the four beasts of Daniel 7 called up out of the Gentile sea to protect God’s people). Each time a beast went bad, God replaced it.

The Roman beast protected God’s people (now called Christians) all throughout the book of Acts. It was only the apostate Jews who wanted to destroy the Church, and the Romans always protected the Church. But after the events of Acts, the Roman beast went bad and turned on the Church — so God killed it.

The first century apostate Jews worshipped the religion of power. They wanted their Messiah to come with a sword and establish a Jewish empire. Jesus offered a religion of righteousness and self-sacrifice, but the apostate Jews rebelled against that and said, “We have no king but Caesar!” The Jewish leadership caused the people to worship the Roman beast — power religion.

We read about this in Revelation 13. The Land Beast (the Herods and the High Priesthood — two horns) caused all the people on the land (Israel) to worship the Sea Beast (the power of the Roman empire). The Land Beast caused all the people to put the mark of the Sea Beast on their foreheads — 666. That’s in direct contrast to the mark of God put on the foreheads of the faithful Jews in Revelation 7. No one could buy or sell without the mark. Buying and selling refers to worship, which is why Jesus says, “I counsel you to buy from Me gold…” (Revelation 3:18).

Solomon, at the peak of his career, did exactly as God intended for Israel. He built the temple and people from the surrounding nations came to Israel to see the glory of God and to learn from the kingdom of priests. But, Solomon went bad and began to worship power religion. We can read of his downfall in 1 Kings.

In 1 Kings chapters 10 & 11 we read that Solomon multiplied for himself horses, wives, and gold — exactly what he was not supposed to do as king. And we know he became a harsh king because when his son, Rehoboam, took power, the people asked for a more lenient rule (1 Kings 12).

When we read about Solomon multiplying gold (1 Kings 10:14), the bible says that he had 666 talents of gold coming to him each year. There’s more to that number than just this, but anyone “with understanding” reading the book of Revelation in the first century would have seen that the number 666 directly tied the Jewish worship of power religion to the fall of Solomon and his worship of power religion.

There is no need to go outside the bible to understand the number 666 or any of the other symbols in Revelation. 666 does not refer to Barak Obama, George W Bush, three W’s, or any of that stuff. It can all be understood by looking back into the Old Testament.

*This explanation of 666 is derived from James B Jordan’s teaching on the book of Revelation, which you can buy here.