Protensive

My recent interview with Josh Howard on the show Eschatology Matters intensified a need I have felt for some time. He asked how the sheep and goats judgment in the Olivet Discourse (Matt 25:31–46) fits into inmillennialism.¹

The difficulty arises because I believe Jesus focused on one subject—the destruction of the temple (Matt 24:1–3). Even so, I think the judgment about which Josh asked pertains to the end of history.

How can inmillennialism account for Jesus describing the final judgment while discussing the temple’s fall in his generation?

The answer is that the Scriptures often speak of two events together, even though a long period separates them. This is like using the alphabet to describe Jesus: He is the Alpha and Omega (Rev 1:8, 11; 21:6; 22:13). This collapsing draws attention to the first and last letters without discarding the others.

In my post, Paul and the Rapture—Part 3, I adopted Ken Gentry’s term protensive to describe this prophetic device. I hesitated to use this archaic term in my interview with Josh because of its unfamiliarity. Later, I wondered if I could find a better one. I considered the following alternatives.

Foreshortening

Daniel Pusey uses the term foreshortening to explain several prophecies. In his comments on Daniel 12:2, for instance, he says, 

It is said, that Antiochus Epiphanes is again spoken of in ch. 11 and, that, after his destruction, the resurrection of the dead is foretold [in Dan 12:2—MR]. This, if so, would prove nothing. It would only be that same foreshortening, which we find throughout Holy Scripture.²

I agree with this application of foreshortening: Daniel placed Antiochus and the resurrection side-by-side.

Other writers, however, have inserted additional ideas into foreshortening. They say the prophets only saw prophetic mountain peaks and were unaware of the valleys between them. Some say the church age in which we now live is such a valley: “The present age is a parenthesis or a time period not predicted by the Old Testament and therefore not fulfilling or advancing the program of events revealed in the Old Testament.”³ 

This version of foreshortening creates troubling questions regarding many prophecies. For example, Paul saw two resurrection mountain peaks—Christ’s at the beginning of our age and ours at its end (1 Cor 15:23). Was he uninformed about the intervening period? Even if Paul knew something about the church age, were other ages hidden from his view?

These questionable insertions disqualify foreshortening as the best term.

Double Reference, Dual Fulfillment, etc.

J. Dwight Pentecost captures the concept I have in mind, calling it the law of double reference:

Two events, widely separated as to the time of their fulfillment, may be brought together into the scope of one prophecy. This was done because the prophet had a message for his own day as well as for a future time.… It was the purpose of God to give the near and far view so that the fulfillment of the one should be the assurance of the fulfillment of the other.⁴

I would gladly use double reference if this were all it implied. However, many writers use this terminology in unacceptable ways. John MacArthur, for example, says, “All prophecy … has at least a double bearing.” Can this rule apply to Paul’s prophecy of a future bodily resurrection (1 Cor 15:22–24)? I think not. 

Lehman Strauss provides another example in his comments on Daniel 8:19–24:

A prophecy may have a first and fragmentary fulfillment centuries before its full and final fulfillment. I see in Daniel 8 two end-time periods.… The first of these periods of wrath commenced with the Babylonian captivity and concluded with the atrocities of Antiochus, after which there was deliverance. The second of these periods is yet future.… This method of prophetic interpretation must be employed if we are to understand clearly some of the great prophetic passages in the Bible.⁵

The text says the vision concerns “the latter time of their (i.e., the Greeks) kingdom” (Dan 8:23). Nothing in the passage suggests a divided fulfillment, with some parts of it in a time in our future.⁶ I suspect Strauss makes this move because his assumed prophetic framework requires a future Antichrist similar to Antiochus.

Such deviations from Pentecost’s definition make me reluctant to use terms like dual fulfillment, double reference, double bearing, etc.

Generic Prophecy

Walter Kaiser Jr. warns against misusing terms such as “double reference” and “double sense.” Instead, he recommends Willis J. Beecher’s term generic prediction: 

A generic prediction is one which regards an event as occurring in a series of parts, separated by intervals, and expresses itself in language that may apply indifferently to the nearest part, or to the remoter parts, or to the whole—in other words, a prediction which, in applying to the whole of a complex event, also applies to some of its parts.⁷

Kaiser expands this definition and adopts the term generic promise:

The fundamental idea here is that many prophecies begin with a word that ushers in not only a climactic fulfillment, but a series of events, all of which participate in and lead up to that climactic or ultimate event in a protracted series that belong together as a unit because of their corporate or collective solidarity. In this way, the whole set of events makes up one collective totality and constitutes only one idea, even though the events may be spread over a large segment of history by the deliberate plan of God. The important point to observe, however, is that all of the parts belong to a single whole. They are generically related to each other by some identifiable wholeness.⁸

These ideas are close to what I have in mind. In Jesus’ Olivet Discourse, He described events in the last days of the Mosaic age that would establish the messianic age. He omitted events “spread over a large segment of history”—those in the messianic age when God would subdue all His enemies (Psa 110:1). Finally, He described the climactic event of the messianic age—the sheep and goats judgment. All these events “belong to a single whole”—the kingdom of God—and Jesus referred to them as a unit.

I like almost everything about this approach except its name—it is too generic. I want a term that conveys a specific meaning and says something about this concept.

Protensive

So, I’ve reaffirmed my decision to follow Gentry and use the word protensive to describe this literary device. Protensive means “having continuance in time” or “having lengthwise extent.”⁹ 

While speaking about the Bride of Christ in Revelation, Gentry says,

The picture [John] presents is … protensive: He looks at the end results of the present redemptive reality. This protensive view is common in Scripture, as when we read of “new wine” being found in the “cluster” (Isa. 65:8). Obviously grapes are found in clusters, not the end product of new wine. But the inherent quality of the grape to produce wine and its common usage for such allow the poet to see the developing wine through the original product. John is able to see in the historic, persecuted first-century church the beauty that is hers—because of her … future glory.¹⁰

The grapes will have “continuance in time” until they produce wine.

The prophets used the protensive view to simultaneously focus on events in their day and resultant events in their distant future. Isaiah, for example, described how God said he “should not walk in the way of this people” (Isa 8:11–22). He was speaking about the grape cluster in apostate Israel. In the following two verses, he spoke about future wine: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isa 9:1–2). We now know this is the Lord Jesus, the world’s light (John 8:12). Isaiah concurrently saw events in his day and others that would occur seven centuries later.

In another place, Isaiah described God’s judgment against Israel in his near future: “Our holy and beautiful temple, where our fathers praised You, is burned up with fire” (Isa 64:9–12). This destruction occurred in 586 BC, and, to use our protensive language, was the cluster. The prophet immediately introduced messianic-age wine: “I was sought by those who did not ask for Me; I was found by those who did not seek Me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ to a nation that was not called by My name” (Isa 65:1; cp. Rom 10:20).

The protensive view of events allowed prophets to contemplate the distant results of imminent events. In my interview with Josh, I could have said Jesus used a protense in the Olivet Discourse: He described the final judgment (the wine) at the end of the messianic age while discussing events at its beginning (the cluster).

The following list of passages is from Jesus and the Apostle Paul. It justifies my protensive interpretation of the judgment in the Olivet Discourse. Each grape cluster comes from the last days of the Mosaic age, and the wine is from the end of the messianic age.

Grapes in the last days of the Mosaic age	Wine at the end of the messianic age	Scripture
	Jesus
Entering the kingdom11	Day of final judgment12	Matt 7:21–22
Christ’s burial	Final judgment	Matt 12:40–4113
Christ’s enthronement	His complete victory14	Matt 22:44
Christ’s kingdom coming	Final judgment15	Matt 16:27
Spiritual resurrection	Physical resurrection	John 5:25–29
Bread from heaven	Resurrection on the last day16	John 6:32, 39, 5417
Jesus’ coming as light	Judgment on the last day	John 12:46–48
	Paul
Christ’s resurrection	Our resurrection	Rom 6:4–5
Christ’s resurrection	Quickening of our bodies	Rom 8:11
Christ’s resurrection	Judgment seat of Christ	Rom 14:9–12
Christ’s resurrection	Our resurrection	1 Cor 6:14
Christ’s resurrection	Our resurrection	1 Cor 15:20–23
Christ’s resurrection	Our resurrection	2 Cor 4:14
Judgment of apostate Israel	Our resurrection	Phil 3:19–21; cp. Phil 3:2–818

While preparing this chart, I reviewed Jesus’ sayings in the New Testament and many of Paul’s statements. This exercise made four powerful impressions. First, these teachers said little about events at the end of history. They mainly talked about the kingdom’s arrival and their work establishing it. They also taught the saints how to live in that kingdom. 

Second, on the few occasions they spoke about the end of history, they almost always used the protensive view to link the resurrection and final judgment to events in the last days of the Mosaic age.

Third, Jesus, Paul, and the other Apostles had the same message: If God fulfilled the Olivet Discourse prophecies, the messianic age would produce the wonderful results the prophets had foretold. This would include the bodily resurrection and the purging of sin from God’s good creation.

Finally, other Scriptures (or history) must show that a period comes between the cluster events and the wine events. We are not free to use the protensive view (or whatever we call it) indiscriminately. 

Conclusion

The Scriptures often put near-term events side-by-side with those in the distant future. Scholars and theologians have used various names to describe this phenomenon: foreshortening, double reference, dual fulfillment, generic prophecy, and others. Protensive serves us better despite its unfamiliarity. 

The protensive view explains Jesus’ ending to His Olivet Discourse (Matt 24–25; Mark 13; Luke 21:5–38). He described the transition from the Mosaic age to the messianic age. The temple’s demise would simultaneously end the inferior age of types and shadows and fully establish the superior one of “spirit and truth” (John 4:24). The necessary events would occur in Jesus’ generation (Matt 24:34). These events were the prophetic grape cluster.

Before ending the Olivet Discourse, Jesus spoke of the ultimate end of the messianic age—the protensive wine. He described the final judgment and the eternal state of the righteous and the wicked.

I’m settled on the word to use for this device. In future interviews, I’ll say Jesus used the protensive view to juxtapose the final judgment with the temple’s destruction.

1. Please consider becoming familiar with the inmillennial view of prophecy. You can read a summary version here or tackle the book-length version here.
2. E. B. Pusey, Daniel the Prophet (1885; repr., Minneapolis: Klock & Klock, 1978), 136. My italics.
3. Walvoord, John F. Millennial Series:Part 20: Premillennialism and the Church as a Mystery, https://walvoord.com/article/57.
4. J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come: A Study in Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1964), 46–47.
5. Lehman Strauss, The Prophecies of Daniel (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1969), 244-45.
6. Strauss’ approach seems more like the insertion of a parenthetical period than a dual fulfillment. Sometimes these interpretive devices go hand-in-hand.
7. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., The Uses of the Old Testament in the New, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 67. He is quoting Willis Judson Beecher, The Prophets and the Promise (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 1905), 31.
8. Kaiser, The Uses of the Old Testament in the New, 67–68.
9. Philip Babcock Gove, ed., Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1981), s.v. protensive. I discussed this view in Paul and the Rapture—Part 3 as it relates to Paul’s teaching in First Thessalonians 4. Here, I’m isolating the concept for future reference.
10. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Book of Revelation Made Easy, 2nd ed. (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2010), 128. Emphasis in original.