Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

APPENDIX C
deceive the nations. The Calvinist denies that men can
“lose their salvation,” meaning their regenerate status.
The rebels are not “formerly regenerate” men. But they
are men with power, or at least the trappings of power.
They are powerful enough to delude themselves that
they can destroy the people of God. And power, as I
have tried to emphasize throughout this essay, is not the
product of antinomian or chaos-oriented philosophy.
The very existence of a military chain of command
demands a concept of law and order. Satan commands
an army on that final day.
The postmillennial vision of the future paints a picture
of historically incomparable blessings. It also tells of a
final rebellion that leads to God’s total and final
judgment. Like the long-lived men in the days of
Methuselah, judgment comes upon them in the midst
of power, prosperity, and external blessings. God has
been gracious to them all to the utmost of His common
grace. He has been gracious in response to their
covenantal faithfulness to His civil law-order, and He
has been gracious in order to pile the maximum
possible pile of coals on their heads. In contrast to Van
Til’s amillennialist vision of the future, we must say:
When common grace is extended to its maximum limits
possible in history, then the crack of doom has come – doom
for the rebels.
Epistemological Self-Consciousness and Cooperation
Van Til writes: “But when all the reprobate are
epistemologically self-conscious, the crack of doom has
come. The fully self-conscious reprobate will do all he
can in every dimension to destroy the people of God.”
Yet Van Til has written in another place that the rebel
against God is like a little child who has to sit on his
father’s lap in order to slap his face. What, then, can be
meant by the concept of increasing epistemological
self-consciousness?
“As the wheat and tares grow to maturity,” the
amillennialist argues, “the tares become stronger and
stronger culturally, while the wheat becomes weaker
and weaker. Consider what is being said. As Christians
work out their own salvation with fear and trembling,
improving their creeds, improving their cooperation
with each other on the basis of agreement about the
creeds, as they learn about the law of God as it applies
in their own era, as they become skilled in applying the
law of God that they have learned about, they become
culturally impotent. They become infertile, also, it
would seem. They do not become fruitful and multiply.
Or if they do their best to follow this commandment,
they are left without the blessing of God – a blessing
which He has promised to those who follow the laws
He has established.” In short, the increase of epistemological
self-consciousness on the part of Christians
leads to cultural impotence.
I am faced with an unpleasant conclusion: the
amillennialist version of the common grace doctrine is
inescapably antinomian. It argues that God no longer
respects His covenantal law-order, that Deuteronomy’s
teaching about covenantal law is invalid in New
Testament times. The only way for the amillennialist to
avoid the charge of antinomianism is for him to
abandon the concept of increasing epistemological selfconsciousness.
He must face the fact that to achieve
cultural impotence, Christians therefore must not
increase in knowledge and covenantal faithfulness.
(Admittedly, the condition of twentieth-century
Christianity does appear to enforce this attitude about
epistemological self-consciousness among Christians.)
Consider the other half of Van Til’s dictum. As the
epistemological self-consciousness of the unregenerate
increases, and they adhere more and more to their
epistemological premises of the origins of matter out of
chaos, and the ultimate return of all matter into pure
randomness, this chaos philosophy makes them
confident. The Christian is humble before God, but
confident before the creation which he is to subdue.
This confidence leads the Christian into defeat and
ultimate disaster, say amillennialists, who believe in
increasing epistemological self-consciousness. On the
other hand, the rebel is arrogant before God and claims
that all nature is ruled by the meaningless laws of
probability – ultimate chaos. By immersing themselves
in the philosophy of chaos, the unbelievers are able to
emerge totally victorious across the whole face of the
earth, says the amillennialist, a victory which is called
to a halt only by the physical intervention of Jesus
Christ at the final judgment. A commitment to
lawlessness, in the amillennial version of common
grace, leads to external victory. How can these things
be?
Amillennialism Has Things Backwards
It should be clear by now that the amillennialist
version of the relationship between biblical law and the
creation is completely backwards. No doubt Satan
wishes it were a true version. He wants his followers to
believe it. But how can a consistent Christian believe
it? How can a Christian believe that adherence to
biblical law produces cultural impotence, while
commitment to philosophical chaos – the religion of
satanic revolution – leads to cultural victory? There is
no doubt in my mind that the amillennialists do not
want to teach such a doctrine, yet that is where their
amillennial pessimism inevitably leads. Dutch
Calvinists preach the cultural mandate (dominion
covenant), but they simultaneously preach that it
cannot be fulfilled. But biblical law is basic to the
fulfillment of the cultural mandate. Therefore, the
amillennialist who preaches the obligation of trying to
fulfil the cultural mandate without biblical law thereby
plunges himself either into the camp of the chaos cults
(mystics, revolutionaries) or into the camp of the
natural-law, common-ground philosophers. There are
only four possibilities: revealed law, natural law, chaos,
or a mixture.
This leads me to my next point. It is somewhat
speculative and may not be completely accurate. It is
an idea which ought to be pursued, however, to see if it
is accurate. I think that the reason why the philosophy
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