He Shall Have Dominion

anointed him, / With whom My hand will be established; / My arm also
will strengthen him” (Ps 89:20–21).
Johnston continues: “The Davidic King will rule as the co-regent,
Prince (Ezek. 34:24), under the divine kingship of YHWH (Ps. 72:19; Isa.
76
40:4–5).” Pentecost states that “the promises in the Davidic covenant
concerning the king, the throne, and the royal house are fulfilled by Messiah
in the millennial age,” then lists Ezekiel 34:23–25 and Hosea 3:5 as
77
evidence. But Ezekiel 34:24 actually states: “And I, the Lord, will be
their God, and My servant David will be prince among them; I, the Lord,
have spoken” (Eze 34:24). While Hosea reads: “Afterward the sons of
Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king.” And
again Johnston declares: “Judah and Israel will serve the Davidic King.” 78
Yet the verse actually states: “But they shall serve the Lord their God, and
David their king, whom I will raise up for them” (Jer 30:9). How can references
to David actually mean Christ — in a strictly literalistic system?
The catastrophic judgment prophecy in Jeremiah 4:23–28, where the
heavens become black and the mountains shake and all the birds flee, is
not to be understood literally, according to dispensationalist Charles H.
Dyer: “Jeremiah pictured God’s coming judgment as a cosmic catastrophe
— an undoing of creation. Using imagery from the Creation account (Gen.
1) Jeremiah indicated that no aspect of life would remain untouched.”
The universal catastrophe imagery had to do with “the approaching army
79 80
of Babylon.” The Prophecy Study Bible agrees. John A. Martin, writing in
the same dispensational commentary, explains the language of Isaiah
13:10–13, where the sun, moon, and stars are darkened and the earth is
moved out of its place: “The statements in 13:10 about the heavenly
bodies (stars . . . sun . . . moon) no longer functioning may figuratively
describe the total turnaround of the political structure of the Near East.
The same would be true of the heavens trembling and the earth shaking (v.
13), figures of speech suggesting all-encompassing destruction.”
Historic Protestant interpretation. Yet the historic Protestant approach
requires that rather than such alleged “objective” interpretations, the
76. Johnston in DPT, 269.
77. Pentecost, Things to Come, 476.
78. Johnston, DPT, 269.
79. Charles H. Dyer, “Jeremiah,” BKC, 1:1136, 1135.
80. PSB, 841.
81. John A. Martin, “Isaiah,” BKC, 1:1059.
81