The Preterist Blog ~ 100% Hyperpreterist Free|we can haz rezurekshun?

Introduction: I am reading “Christ’s Second Coming: Will it be Premillennial?” by David Brown with foreword by Kenneth Gentry. This is an older work which takes a more historicist amillennial view and is described by Dr. Gentry as one of the exemplary refutations of dispensationalism in its time. As I like to do, I am going to post some excerpts here that I find useful at the moment.

I am finding this book oh so useful for such an entirely different purpose from its original intent. Not to insult my premillennial brethren AT ALL, but there is some sense in which refutations of any historical period of salvation history AFTER the Second Coming also refutes hyperpreterism, as hyperpreterism believes the Second Coming is past. If it is impossible to have a “millennium” after the Second Coming (as this book seeks to prove) it is even more so impossible to have any salvation history now in a hyperpreterist post-Second Coming scheme. I have said this for a while, and I have despaired that I have not stated my point eloquently enough. After the Second Coming, Christ’s role changes such that His special Messianic mediatorial role is over, and the Kingdom is “handed up” to the Father complete as per 1 Corinthians 15. This is but one way that hyperpreterism destroys the Gospel. But ah ha, the hyperpreterist will try to say - wouldn’t your point prove too much? Wouldn’t it prove that the premillennial scheme also destroys the Gospel? No. Why? Because the conditions of a future millennium (if true) are largely unknown, but the condition NOW ARE known and the means and need of salvation, and the Gospel for doing so are. This is why only two options are open to the hyperpreterist. One, no one can be saved post-AD 70 or everyone was saved in AD 70. Well, actually there is a third option. There is some secret Gospel for us today that no one but a select few knows.

This builds quite nicely on my view of the Coming of Christ as a block of salvation history and not some isolated event just solely off in the future. The Coming of Christ IS the reign of Christ which is bookended by two physical advents. This is also the view of Keith Mathison, and as I understand it thus far, is also the view of Roderick Edwards (Roderick correct me if I am wrong), and has been the view of such learned men as Hengstenberg and others in the centuries prior to the rise of rapturism.

Now onto the brilliant material of David Brown:

Pages 110-113

THE INTERCESSION OF CHRIST, AND THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT, FOR SAVING PURPOSES, WILL CEASE AT THE SECOND ADVENT

I. The ground and the nature of Christ’s intercession are sufficiently known. but what Iwish to be observed is the place which it holds in relation to his two advents. It stands intermediate between his first and his second coming as the following passage, viewed as a whole, plainly shows:–

Heb. ix. 12, 24-28. “By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. — Christ is not entered into the holy place made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth itno the holy place every year with blood of others; (for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world:) but now once, in the end of the world, hath he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment; so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many: and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation.”

Here the two advents stand at the two extremeties of Christ’s mediatorial work, while the intercession stretches from one to the other, and occupies the whole intervening period. Each of these three things is termed an “appearing” — the word being somewhat different in each case, but the idea essentially the same — and each of them is said to be done once. Thus: “Once, in the end of the world, hath he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” “By his own blood he entered in once into the hole place” — “not into the holy places made with hands, but into heaven itself, now to appear the second time [once for all], without sin, unto salvation.” The first and the last appearances are to us: the intermediate appearance is to God, for us. This intermediate appearance — “in the presence of God for us” — carries into effect the work of his first appearance to us, and prepares teh way for his second. As he appeared the first time “to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself,” so he will appear the second time, “without sin, unto salvation.” Now, as the second coming is here represented as crowning the whole purposes of the first, it is plain that the intercessionm which is but a continual pleading upon the merit of his death, must be over, for all saving purposes, before he comes.

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When the Advent arrives, the Inercession is done; and when the Intercession is done, Salvation is done. When Christ appears the second time to us, he will cease to appear in the presence of God for us.

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In the first edition of this work, I dwelt upon the sphere or locality where the intercession is conducted — “the holy place not made with hands,” “heaven itself,” “at the right hand of God;” affirming that as Christ’s going in within the veil corresponds to his ascension from the earth, and session at the right hand of God, so his coming out again, as did the high priest at the close of his work, answers to his glorious return to us his second adventl and thus, that the period of his intercessioin is jsut the time of his absence from us in the heavens — neither less nor ore; and that, while there is one outstanding soul to be gathered in, he cannot leave his present abode nor alter his present attitude “in the presence of God for us.”