Last week, I posted Part A of Dr. Tom J. Nettles’ foreword for my book, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days, to be released by McGahan Publishing House in August. I said:
Dr. Nettles is a well-known figure. He served as professor of historical theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1997 to 2014. Before joining the faculty at Southern, he spent 21 years at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mid-American Baptist Theological Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has written several influential books: Baptists and the Bible, By His Grace and For His Glory, and others. “Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. said Nettles is a ‘legendary’ Southern Baptist professor.”
Dr. Nettles has expertise in the book’s subject matter from a historical perspective. While doing research for the book, I was pleasantly surprised to see him listed as a speaker at the Fourth International Baptist Conference held at the Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto in October 1988. The conference theme was “The Christian and the Future,” and Dr. Nettles’ paper was “The 19th Century Roots of Dispensationalism.”
I believe Dr. Nettles’ foreword does a good job of summarizing the book’s contents. I think you will understand why I wanted him to write it and why I am thankful he did.
MPH will soon announce the exact date of the book’s availability.
Here is Part B of the foreword. The first paragraph is a repeat from last week’s post:
Foreword to Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days — Part B
Tom J. Nettles
This is not a quick devotional read giving a small dose of spiritual encouragement for the morning. Not that it is void of spiritual benefit; it has plenty of that. But Rogers has constructed a carefully connected detailed argument that requires disciplined power of attention and concentration. You must get your soul and mind ready for some expanded cogency in reasoning. This need for concentrated attention is not because the basic thesis is obtuse and complicated. Rather, the need for discipline resides first with Rogers’ challenge to some of the prevailing views of Matthew 24 and 25 and the eschatological systems surrounding those interpretations. Second, the exegetical evidence is so vigorously pursued that it involves punctilious attention to argument and a careful reframing of relevant elements of New Testament language and context. For example, he makes clear distinctions between “presence” (parousia) and “coming” (erchomai) showing how this distinction gives a fundamental framework to the relationship between the Mosaic Age and the Messianic Age.
The key to investigating the biblical soundness and theological coherence of this viewpoint is found in the details of Rogers’ hermeneutics. He gives much attention to the way in which certain themes, phrases, and images are developed throughout the canon of Scripture as an aid to interpreting phrases in the Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24, 25. He refers to Psalm 110 frequently and shows its importance in the New Testament as a testimony to the present reign of Christ and his gradual overcoming of all enemies throughout the millennium. His recurring discussion of the “Song of Moses” in Deuteronomy has key elements in his understanding of how the end of the Mosaic Age would come about. Jesus’ discussion of the “Great Tribulation” (24:21) uses language of extremities (Rogers calls it hyperbole) that had been established in the Old Testament as an accepted figure of speech to indicate outstanding significance and consummate intensity. His demonstration of the canonical legitimacy of his interpretive framework establishes the credibility of his overall argument.
Along this line is the author’s study of “cosmic collapse imagery”—sun darkened, moon not giving light, and the stars falling from heaven, etc. Again, he shows that this kind of language does not really mean that the physical world ceases to function in its established order, but that the language of physical calamity carries a meaning of social and ideological overthrow. The collapse of the latter is a more devastating reality than that of the former, but not as sensibly obvious. Images, therefore, from the physical and natural realm are used to give sensible impressions of the complete collapse of the social/ideological. This collapse and devastation often is manifest in the physical destruction of a society (Egypt, Judah, Babylon, the Temple) as if to say, “Your ideas cannot sustain you; they are evil and idolatrous; you are weighed in the balances and found wanting.” The physical destruction at the first level indicates the elimination of the physical presence of a society sustained by falsehood. At a more important level, it shows that eternal judgment awaits the devotees and purveyors of lawless, godless, idolatrous, and rebellious ideas. The loss of a soul is more horrific in its consequences than the loss of sun, moon, and stars. “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?”
One effect of the concept of inmillennialism is an intensification of the covenantal theology of the New Testament, the warnings concerning persecution and apostasy, and the Jews’ resistance to the readiness and exuberance of the Gentile reception of the Jewish Messiah. Paul’s assertion that the gospel has come “in all the world” (Colossians 1:6), his confidence that he would go to Spain (Romans 15:28), that he escaped the mouth of the lion “that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear” (2 Timothy 4:17) is related to the intensity of concentration for evangelism before the fall of Jerusalem: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end [the end of the Mosaic Age] come” (Matthew 24:14).
Rogers also employs carefully and artfully (often commenting on the beauty of this scriptural device) the chiastic form of pivotal passages of Scripture. His careful analysis of the formal relations of the chiasm have interpretive power as well as mnemonic value. He introduces each chiasm with clear justification and then summarizes the content it adds to the model he is developing.
The idea of optimistic gradualism is important for affirming the present reign of Christ “until …” and the place of 1 Corinthians 15 at that point is instructive. Also this idea feeds off the implications of many biblical phrases such as Isaiah 9:7, “Of the increase of his government there shall be no end,” and Daniel 2:35 where the stone that smote the image “became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” He also makes short suggestions concerning the impact of this understanding of the Olivet Discourse for interpretation of Revelation. He intends to expand this investigation to other texts throughout the biblical corpus. This naturally invites serious engagement for discussion, an invitation Rogers issues heartily. I think the discussion would be spiritually intriguing and edifying for evangelicals.
Rogers also has unwavering critiques of some of the unwarranted interpretive jumps made in other systems to accommodate faulty assumptions. Though he does not claim to be another Copernicus, he uses that heliocentric discovery to demonstrate how a changed perspective can clarify many mysteries and do away with puzzling exegetical gymnastics. He speaks of one exegetical move as an “outrageous price to pay for faulty beginning assumptions.” When words are translated or ideas promulgated without canonical precedence and sometimes in opposition to the most credible etymological studies, he commented that interpreters would not resort to “unregulated corrective devices like this if their faulty assumptions did not require them to do so.” Rogers applies Occam’s razor to the text arguing that the simplest explanation is the most credible.
He consults a massive amount of literature, includes a large bibliography, and includes helpful appendices. This book must take an important place in the literature concerning the kingdom of God, the manner of Christ’s coming at the “end of the age,” and the nature of the blessed hope.
Read well. Read seriously. Read with an intention to engage and advance the possibility of achieving greater agreement on this important element of biblical revelation.
