Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

3:21-22
the elders of a church, and turn it into a watered-down,
Arminian request from a weak and helpless deity who
is at the mercy of man. We must remember that Christ
is speaking here as the Amen, the faithful and true
Witness, the Creator and Sovereign Lord of all. He is
not making a feeble plea, as if He did not rule history
and predestine its most minute details; He is the King
of Kings, who makes war on His enemies and damns
them to everlasting flames. Nor is he speaking to people
in general, for He is directing His message to His
Church; nor, again, is he simply speaking to Christians
as individuals, but to Christians as members of the
Church. This verse cannot be made to serve the
purposes of Arminian, subjective individualism without
violently wrenching it from its covenantal and textual
context. 19
Nevertheless, there is a distortion on the other side
that is just as serious. It will not do merely to point out
the failures of Arminians to deal satisfactorily with this
text, for Calvinists have traditionally been at fault here
as well. Reformed worship tends to be overly intellectual,
centered around preaching. In the name of being
centered around the Word, it is actually often centered
around the intellect. Reformed rationalism has thus
produced its equal and opposite reaction in Arminian
revivalism, irrationalism, and anti-intellectualism.
People have fled the barren, overly intellectual
emphasis of Reformed worship and have run into the
anti-theology heresies of what is unfortunately known
as evangelicalism (which has, indeed, precious little of
the original evangel). 20
What is the answer? We must take seriously the Biblical
doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the sacrament
of the Eucharist. We must return to the Biblical
pattern of worship centered on Jesus Christ, which
means the weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper, as
well as instruction about its true meaning and
efficacy. 21 We must abandon the rank platonism which
informs our bare, intellectualized worship, and return
to a truly corporate, liturgical worship characterized by
artistic beauty and musical excellence. 22
For it should be obvious that in this verse He is
extending to the Church an offer of renewed
communion with Himself. The very heart and center of
our fellowship with Christ is at His table (i.e., our
earthly table which He has made His). The most basic,
and most profound, offer of salvation is Christ’s offer to
dine with us. In Holy Communion we are genuinely
having dinner with Jesus, lifted up into His heavenly
presence; and, moreover, we are feasting on Him:
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the
Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in
yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood
has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For
My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who
eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in
Him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of
the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because
of Me. (John 6:53-57)
21-22 The final promise to the overcomer is a promise
of dominion with Christ: I will grant to him to sit
down with Me on My Throne, as I also overcame and
sat down with My Father on His Throne. Is this only
a future hope? Assuredly not. The privilege of ruling
with Christ belongs to all Christians, in time and on
earth, although the dominion is progressive through
history until the final consummation. But Christ has
entered upon His Kingdom already (Col. 1:13); He has
disarmed Satan and the demons already (Col. 2:15);
and we are kings and priests with Him already (Rev.
1:6); and just as He conquered, so we are to go forth,
conquering in His name. He reigns now (Acts 2:29-
36), above all creation (Eph. 1:20-22), with all power
in heaven and in earth (Matt. 28:18-20), and is
engaged now in putting all enemies under His feet (1
Cor. 15:25), until His kingdom becomes a great
mountain, filling the whole earth (Dan. 2:35, 45).
We have thus been faced again and again in these
messages to the churches with the fundamental
command of Revelation, that which St. John
admonished us to keep (1:3): Overcome! Conquer! Even
aside from the fact that the prophecy is not about the
twentieth century, we will miss its point if we
concentrate on persecutions or emperor-worship in the
same way that the Hal Lindseys of this age concentrate
on oil embargoes, common markets and hydrogen
bombs: the basic message is about none of these, but
rather about the duty of the Church to conquer the
world. R. J. Rushdoony has well said: “The purpose of
this vision is to give comfort and assurance of victory to
the Church, not to confirm their fears or the threats of
the enemy. To read Revelation as other than the
triumph of the kingdom of God in time and eternity is
to deny the very essence of its meaning.” 23
The great failure of what is commonly known as
“amillennialism” is its unwillingness to come to terms
with these dominical implications of the mediatorial
reign of Jesus Christ, The New Testament writers
constantly urge God’s people to “overcome” in the light
of Christ’s definitive victory. Having been recreated in
His image, according to His likeness (Eph. 4:24; Col.
19. Of course, the Lord offers Himself to people outside the Kingdom as well:
Even the dogs are given crumbs from the children’s table (Matt. 15:21-28);
and the king in Christ’s parable (Luke 14:23) sent his servants out to compel
the Gentiles to come in. But Christ’s offer of salvation is never made outside
the context of the Covenant, the Kingdom, and the Church.
20. See James B. Jordan’s essay “Holistic Evangelism” in his Sociology of the
Church (Tyler, TX: Geneva Ministries, 1986).
21. See Geddes MacGregor, Corpus Christi: The Nature of the Church According to
the Reformed Tradition (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1958); and
Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament (Tyler, TX:
Geneva Ministries, [1953] 1982).
22. One of the most helpful books on worship from a Reformed perspective is
Richard Paquier, Dynamics of Worship: Foundations and Uses of Liturgy
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967). For viewpoints from other traditions see
Louis Bouyer, Liturgical Piety (University of Notre Dame Press, 1955); Josef
A. Jungmann, S. J., The Early Liturgy to the Time of Gregory the Great
(University of Notre Dame Press, 1959); Alexander Schmemann,
Introduction to Liturgical Theology (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 1966); Luther D. Reed, The Lutheran Liturgy (Philadelphia:
Muhlenberg Press, 1947); Massey H. Shepherd Jr., The Worship of the Church
(Greenwich, CT: The Seabury Press, 1952); and Cheslyn Jones et al., eds.,
The Study of Liturgy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).
23. Rousas John Rushdoony, Thy Kingdom Come: Studies in Daniel and
Revelation (Tyler, TX: Thoburn Press, [1970] 1978), p. 90.
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