Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

20:12
redeemed with Thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with Thy Saints
in glory everlasting.
O Lord, save Thy people, and bless Thine heritage.
Govern them, and lift them up forever.
The Athanasian Creed:
He ascended into heaven; He sitteth on the right hand of the
Father, God Almighty; from whence He shall come to
judge the quick and the dead.
At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies
and shall give an account of their own works.
And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting;
and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire.
This is the catholic faith; which except a man believe
faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.
I have emphasized this point because it has become
popular in some otherwise apparently orthodox circles
to adopt a heretical form of “preterism” that denies any
future bodily Resurrection or Judgment, asserting that
all these are fulfilled in the Resurrection of Christ, the
regeneration of the Church, the coming of the New
Covenant, and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.
70. 49 Whatever else may be said about those who hold
such notions, it is clear that they are not in conformity
with any recognizable form of orthodox Christianity.
The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church has
always and everywhere insisted on the doctrine of the
Last Judgment at the end of time. Its inclusion into all
the historic definitions of the Faith is a universal
testimony to its importance as an article of belief.
St. John heightens our sense of awe at the terrible
majesty of the Judge: From whose face earth and
heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.
The allusion is to Psalm 114, which shows us that it is
in light of the Final Judgment that we can see the
significance of its precursors in preliminary historic
judgments:
When Israel went forth from Egypt,
The house of Jacob from a people of strange language,
Judah became His sanctuary,
Israel, His dominion.
The sea looked and fled;
The Jordan turned back.
The mountains skipped like rams,
The hills, like lambs.
What ails you, O sea, that you flee?
O Jordan, that you turn back?
O mountains, that you skip like rams?
O hills, like lambs?
Tremble, O earth, before the LORD,
Before the God of Jacob,
Who turned the rock into a pool of water,
The flint into a fountain of water. (Ps. 114)
Earth and heaven flee from before His face, terrified at
His approach; yet the people of the covenant need
have no fear. For them, God’s judgment is redemptive,
not destructive. If the earth trembles, it is for our sake,
so that God may give us the water of salvation. In fact,
as we shall see, the judgment portrayed in these verses
is concerned with the wicked dead, those who come
under the judgment of the Second Death. The elect,
who reign with Christ, are not in view here. Rejoicing
in the fruit of Christ’s final victory, they do not come
into judgment, but have passed out of death into life
(John 5:24).
12 Although we are still in the sixth vision, verse 12
contains the seventh kai eidon, And I saw – allowing
the seventh vision to begin with the eighth kai eidon
(see on 21:1). We must remember that St. John is not
writing of the general judgment of all men, but of the
fate of the wicked, called here the dead (cf. v.5).
Hengstenberg comments: “The dead can only be the
ungodly dead. It must alone appear singular, that here
the dead are still spoken of, although they must have
been raised up, before they could stand before the
throne. If only the ungodly dead are meant, then there
is nothing strange in the matter. For their life after the
resurrection is but a life in semblance, as it was also
before in Hades.” 50
St. John tells us he saw men of all classes and
conditions, both the great and the small, standing
before the Throne. And books were opened; and
another book was opened, which is the Book of Life,
the membership roll of the covenant, in which the
names of the elect are inscribed (cf. 3:5; 13:8; 17:8).
The function of the Book of Life in this context is
simply to reveal that the names of “the dead” do not
appear therein.
And the dead were judged from the things which
were written in the books, according to their works.
This can seem strange to modern evangelical ears; we
are not used to reading such statements in Scripture,
yet they actually exist in abundance (cf. Ps. 62:12; Prov.
24:12; Matt. 16:27; John 5:28-29; Rom. 2:6-13; 14:12;
1 Cor. 3:13; 2 Cor. 5:10; Eph. 6:8; Col. 3:25; Rev. 2:23;
22:12). The point of the text is not, of course,
“salvation by works.” The point is, instead, damnation
by works.
It is true that we are not saved by works (Eph. 2:8-9),
but it is also true that we are not saved without works
(Eph. 2:10; Phil. 2:12-13). The Christian is “justified by
faith alone” – but genuine justifying faith is never
alone, as the Westminster Confession of Faith declares:
“Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His
righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification;
yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever
accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no
49. The most influential figure in this movement is Max R. King, a Church of
Christ minister who has authored The Spirit of Prophecy (Warren, OH: Max
R. King, 1971), a work that is both insightful and frustrating. King’s
hermeneutic is hampered by neoplatonic presuppositions (God wouldn’t
bother to resurrect a physical body because He is interested only in
“spiritual,” i.e. incorporeal, things) and by a “code” approach to Biblical
symbolism. Cf. Jim McGuiggan and Max R. King, The McGuiggan-King
Debate (Warren, OH: Parkman Road Church of Christ, n.d.). See also the
similar views espoused by J. Stuart Russell, The Parousia: A Study of the New
Testament Doctrine of Our Lord’s Second Coming (Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, [1887] 1983). James B. Jordan has responded to King and Russell in
two taped lectures, available from Geneva Ministries, P. O. Box 131300,
Tyler, TX 75713.
50. E. W. Hengstenberg, The Revelation of St. John, two vols. (Cherry Hill, NJ:
Mack Publishing Co., n.d.), Vol. 2, p. 310.
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