Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

APPENDIX C
There is continuity in life, despite discontinuities. The
wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just. Satan would
like to burn up God’s field, but he cannot. The tares
and wheat grow to maturity, and then the reapers go
out to harvest the wheat, cutting away the chaff and
tossing chaff into the fire. Satan would like to turn back
the crack of doom, return to ground zero, return to the
garden of Eden, when the dominion covenant was first
given. The fulfillment of the dominion covenant is the
final act of Satan that is positive – an extension of
common grace. After that, common grace becomes
malevolent – absolutely malevolent – as Satan uses the
law of his time and the last of his power to strike out
against God’s people. When he uses his gifts to become
finally, totally destructive, he is cut down from above.
This final culmination of common grace is Satan’s crack of
doom.
And the meek – meek before God, active toward His
creation – shall at last inherit the earth. A renewed
earth and renewed heaven is the final payment by God
the Father to His Son and to those He has given to His
Son. This is the postmillennial hope.
Postscript
By now, I have alienated every known Christian group.
I have alienated the remaining Christian Reformed
Church members who are orthodox by siding with the
Protestant Reformed Church against Point 1 of the
1924 Synod. There is no favor in God’s common grace.
I have alienated the Protestant Reformed Church by
arguing for post-millennialism. I have alienated the
premillennialists by arguing that the separation
between wheat and tares must come at the end of
history, not a thousand years before the end (or, in
the dispensational, pretribulational premillennial
framework, 1007 years before). I have alienated
postmillennial pietists who read and delight in the
works of Jonathan Edwards by arguing that Edwards’
tradition was destructive to biblical law in 1740 and
still is. It leads nowhere unless it matures and adopts
the concept of biblical law as a tool of victory. I have
alienated the Bible Presbyterian Church, since its
leaders deny the dominion covenant. Have I missed
anyone? Oh, yes, I have alienated postmillennial
Arminians (“positive confession” charismatics) by
arguing that the rebels in the last day are not
backslidden Christians.
Having accomplished this, I hope that others will
follow through on the outline I have sketched relating
common grace, eschatology, and biblical law. Let those
few who take this essay seriously avoid the theological
land mines that still clutter up the landscape. There are
refinements that must be made, implications that must
be discovered and then worked out. I hope that my
contribution will make other men’s tasks that much
easier.
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