A Response to Pheelan McPhalen’s Review of Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days

Pheelan McPhalen honored me on his podcast, All Things Eschatology. In a recent thirty-minute episode, Is Inmillennialism a Thing?, he reviewed my book, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days.¹ He did so after hearing my interview with Josh Howard on Eschatology Matters (here). 

I am thankful for Pheelan’s review. He was the first person to publish such feedback and was fair and just. He read the book with great care and attention to detail.

Pheelan has asked if I am interested in talking further about the book, and I look forward to doing so. Here, I will analyze the podcast as a whole and then respond to his cons for the book.

A Summary of the Pros

For convenience, I asked Kip Jacobs, my technology partner for many years, to embed the interview here. 

If you watched the video, you may want to skip this section. The following analysis is for those who like words.

The first half of the session contains the pros Pheelan saw in the book. He complimented the quality of the physical book, including its construction, paper, dust jacket, and typeset. This is high praise, considering he is a self-described “book snob.”

The support blurbs from evangelical scholars surprised Pheelan. I suppose his amazement comes from the book’s strong preterist orientation—something scholars sometimes avoid. In any case, he notes some academics speak well of the book.

As a former engineer, I am sensitive about techies’ reputation regarding the King’s English. How nice to hear Pheelan, a “spelling Nazi,” compliment my proofreaders for eliminating almost all such mistakes. Even the grammar was gook, he said. (Pun intended.)

Regarding documentation, Pheelan thinks the bibliography alone is worth the book’s price. He also enjoys having reference notes at the end of the chapters instead of at the back of the book. The documentation “literally blows to pieces any preterist book I have ever read.”² 

Pheelan mentioned my publisher, McGahan Publishing House, in a positive light while acknowledging he knows little about them. (While we’re here, I want to give a shout-out to Caleb Poston and his team for their work. They have blessed me beyond measure.)

Pheelan said he wanted to read my book because the church needs a better model of eschatology. This gives me hope he will continue considering my arguments, even though he emphatically asserted his allegiance to historic premillennialism.

I tried to express the book’s basic thesis in its subtitle. It is that terms like the last days usually refer to the end of the Mosaic age, not the end of history. Pheelan comes close to this idea when he says my central idea is the parousia of Christ, which is His presence with the church in the messianic age. However, this definition of parousia is the natural and necessary byproduct of my last-days shift. I see the shift as more essential to inmillennialism than the definition of parousia.

 According to Pheelan, the book, 

1. Offers “better interpretations of key passages” (e.g., Luke 21:22).³ 
2. “Gets into a lot of exegesis.”
3. Is “heavily illustrated with charts.” (This one is music to my engineer’s ears.)

The Cons

Pheelan mentions four major cons in the book. I want to respond to each.

A Two-age Handicap

Pheelan says, “The two-age system handicaps his eschatological model.”⁴ This is because inmillennialism makes no distinction between the Mosaic and Adamic ages. However, the New Testament’s uses of the word ages (Gk. aion) force us to account for an Adamic age. He mentioned passages like Luke 20:34–38 that speak of the children of “this age” marrying and those in “that age” not marrying. God instituted marriage at creation with Adam and Eve. Therefore, Pheelan says, marriage will not end until the Adamic age ends.

He says the Jews were wrong to use a two-age model. They were expecting only one advent of the Messiah, and that event would divide history into two ages. We now know Jesus will appear twice, dividing history into more than two ages.

I hesitate to say more about Pheelan’s beliefs because I don’t know the details of his overall system. He says Jesus was talking about the end of both the Adamic and Mosaic ages in the Olivet Discourse, but I don’t know how he sees that happening. Perhaps future discussions will help me better understand his views.

Still, Pheelan makes a good point: inmillennialism should refer to the period from Adam to Moses. I will correct this deficiency if I issue a second edition of my book. However, I believe the two-age model is the proper foundation for our prophetic framework. 

The New Testament doesn’t directly speak about an Adamic age. We may infer such an age from an assumed meaning for passages like Luke 20:34–38. However, I have shown that this is not a necessary assumption.⁵

The orientation of Jesus and the apostles is of an age about to end—the Mosaic age with its ordinances. They proclaimed a new age of better things in their near future (e.g., Heb 9:8–10, 26; 10:37). Because of this, I will keep this orientation: “These two eschatological ages can … be seen as the basic eschatological framework taught by both Jesus and Paul.”⁶

A Missing Index

Pheelan offers another valid criticism: my book lacks a Scripture index. I love such indexes and hope future editions also correct this deficiency. I still remember the rush to finish and publish the book before my seventieth birthday. (See the AD 70 connection?) Sadly, I ran out of time to produce everything I had in mind, including an index.

I accepted this deficiency because, as Pheelan observes, the book deals primarily with Jesus’ Olivet Discourse (Matt 24–25; Mark 13; Luke 21:5–38). I used other passages to explain, confirm, and defend my explanation as I documented the underlying prophetic model.

I deny omitting an index because of how inmillennialism fares in interpreting other passages. I expressed my intentions regarding this issue:

If the Lord wills, I plan to write a series of books that will use inmillennialism to interpret prophetic passages in individual books of the Bible. One of my principal objectives will be to answer the common questions people have when they first learn of this view. I want those who investigate this “system of religious truth” to see how it explains God’s inspired word. And I pray that God will use it to “make disciples of all nations” as his word comes alive in the hearts of many.⁷

Pheelan mentioned I do not discuss 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 in the book. He expresses skepticism regarding inmillennialism’s ability to explain that passage and preserve a future bodily resurrection. He hints I may agree with the full preterists on this passage. I don’t. 

First Thessalonians 4:13–5:5 is the most difficult passage for me to explain to someone committed to another prophetic system. Still, I’m convinced it fits well within the inmillennial model. I explain this belief in a series of blog posts beginning here.

The purpose of my book is not to correlate all passages, or even selected important ones, with inmillennialism. As seen in the blog overview, I’ve done some of the needed work in this blog. Several book projects are still beckoning for attention.

An Overused Illustration

My new friend (I hope) has a third con: I “constantly use” the Ptolemaic vs. Copernican illustration.⁸ He thinks this is gratuitous and irrelevant to what I tried to prove. In short, I kept pushing it and took up too much time with it.

I accept this observation without protest. The book mentions Copernicus thirty-nine times, fourteen of which are past the Introduction, where I suggest the analogy. Those numbers are higher than I expected when I investigated Pheelan’s point. I hope other readers found the comparison exciting and a memorable way to remember my central point about the center of our prophetic models.

Trying Too Hard

Fourth, Pheelan says I tried too hard to establish my interpretations, which raised a red flag to him. He believes some of my exegesis is fanciful, like my take on Jesus’s appearance as a lightning flash, the gathering of the elect, the parables, and the judgment of all nations. These, he says, get far-fetched.

My response is this: readers using other interpretive grids might also find my explanations fanciful and far-fetched. That’s why I tried to support them from many Scriptures and writings of orthodox Christians. Would I have been more persuasive had I used less material?

Pheelan’s comments about my approach surprised me a bit. For example, he says, “Of course, he is doing a lot of comparison with other verses. He is citing a lot of authors, but it just, you know, you can just tell this is not what Jesus was talking about.”⁹

I hope this will be a topic of future discussions with Pheelan because I can’t “just tell” what Jesus was talking about. I need to know how the Scriptures use lightning imagery. I must know about covenant virgins before I attempt to explain His parable about them. I must know many such things before I know Jesus’ meaning in the Olivet Discourse.

More Observations

Pheelan uses something like the “sandwich” method of critique: “positive feedback … then … problems we see in the work … then … something positive in the work.”¹⁰ This pleased me very much as he concluded his review. 

With raised hands, he exclaimed, “He gets the 40-year wilderness motif right. He gets it! Yea!” My heart pounded when he shared his screen to show the typology chart, saying, “Brilliant,” “Pretty cool, huh?” and “Pretty interesting.”

My spirits sank a little when Pheelan said that none of Christ’s eschatological teachings pass over into the land in my motif.¹¹ “In Rogers’ system, everything Christ taught applied only to Israel. Implementation of those teachings in the land is lacking.”

This is the opposite of what I intended. Jesus and the apostles established the kingdom and taught us how to live in it. All their ethical teaching carried over into “the land,” which, in inmillennialism, equates to the messianic-age kingdom. In addition, God charged Israel to conquer the land, so He commissioned us to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matt 28:18–20). He established the base for the mission in the “last days” of the Mosaic age, and it carried over into “the land” of the kingdom.

We may have another topic for future discussion here because, later in the review, he says my book may appeal to preterists.¹² This will help them “bring some applicability back to the now.” This assertion, which I endorse, contradicts the idea that none of the Lord’s eschatological teachings pertain to our age.

Pheelan says my book is “a product of its class.” It is better than books advocating full preterism and other forms of partial preterism. It is more logical than amillennialism. Still, I used a chart from Ed Stephens, a well-known full preterist, and admitted that other preterist writers have influenced my thinking. Therefore, even though I tried to distance myself from them, my book is still a product of this class of writers.

I don’t object to this categorizing—my book is firmly preteristic. However, I emphasize in the book and will do so here that my purpose was to help readers avoid the unorthodox conclusions of these writers. In that sense, it counters this class of writers. 

At the end of the review, he says he might do another session on this book if he finds things he missed. I would like that very much.

Conclusion

Thank you, Pheelan McPhalen, for doing this review. Your gracious spirit made the medicine go down with ease.

I hope future dialog will allow us to heed Mortimer Adler’s observations, which I mentioned in the book.¹³ If you disagree with my conclusions, you have a particular obligation to tell me why. I’m not sure that a missing index, an overused analogy, or an overzealous explanation are sufficient causes for rejection. However, if true, your points about the two-age model might be enough justification.

Our shared aim is to glorify God—our Maker and Redeemer. We can best do that by preaching the gospel of the kingdom (Matt 4:23; 9:35; 24:14; et al.) and living according to its laws. Our prophetic model dictates what we say and believe about that kingdom. May the Holy Spirit give us insight into these matters and allow us to speak the same things.

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. See the video at 8:10. My use of quotation marks for quotes in this post is not rigorous when referring to the video. I trust I have given the correct sense of Pheelan’s statements if not the exact words.
3. See the video at 11:55.
4. See the video at 14:00.
5. Please see Meditations in Matthew Twenty-two: Marriage in the New Age.
6. Kim Riddlebarger, A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 89.
7. Michael A. Rogers, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days (Tullahoma, TN: McGahan Publishing House, 2020), 284.
8. See the video at 19:17.
9. See the video at 22:16.
10. Word Weavers and others use this method in their critique sessions.
11. See the video at 26:00.
12. Preterism is the belief that past events have fulfilled certain prophecies. A full preterist believes that all prophecies are fulfilled.
13. Rogers, Inmillennialism, 5–7.