Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

PUBLISHER’S PREFACE
of the Book of Deuteronomy. They had five points: (1)
an identification of the king; (2) the historical events
that led to the establishment of the covenant; (3)
stipulations (terms) of the covenant; (4) a warning of
judgment against anyone who disobeyed, but a promise
of blessing to those who did obey; and (5) a system of
reconfirming the treaty at the death of the king or the
vassal.
Kline developed some of the implications of this
covenant scheme. Sutton developed a great many
more. These remarkable, path-breaking discoveries can
be found in his book, That You May Prosper (1987). 4
But more importantly, he noticed that this five-point
covenantal structure governs the books of Psalms,
Hosea, Matthew, Hebrews 8, and several of Paul’s
epistles. Sutton’s thoroughgoing development of the
covenant structure has to be regarded as the most
important single theological breakthrough in the
Christian Reconstruction movement since the
publication of R. J. Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical
Law, in 1973. After Sutton pointed out this five-point
covenantal structure, I recognized it in the Ten
Commandments, just before I had finished my
economic commentary on the Ten Commandments. 5
Sutton presented his discovery in a series of Wednesday
night Bible studies. The first night that Chilton heard
it, he was stunned. He came up to Sutton after the
message and told him that this was clearly the key to
Revelation’s structure. He had been trying to work with
a four-point model, and he had become thoroughly
stuck. Chilton went back to work, and within a few
weeks he had restructured the manuscript. Within a
few months, he had finished it, after three and a half
years. (Time, times, and half a time.)
Tyler Theology
I am confident that The Days of Vengeance will come in
for its share of ridicule – from many camps, for many
reasons. Chilton’s rhetorical brilliance will make this
approach risky for critics who go into print, but the
unpublished murmurings and backbiting will spread
rapidly. Chilton is going to take a lot of heat because of
his excursions into biblical symbolism and his
argument that the structure of the Book of Revelation
is the same as the structure of Deuteronomy. What the
reader should understand from the beginning is that
these two insights, while executed with great skill, are
derived from the works of Kline, Jordan, and Sutton.
Chilton should not be singled out as some sort of
isolated theological maverick who simply invented his
findings out of thin air – or worse, in a room filled with
odd-smelling smoke. He came to these insights while
he was working with other men in what has become
known as “the Tyler group,” located in Tyler, Texas, a
town of about 75,000 in East Texas.
This book is a good example, for better or worse, of
what has become known as “Tyler theology.” This
theology is part of a larger stream of thought called
4. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (Tyler,
Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).
Christian Reconstruction, also called “theonomy,”
although some members of these schools of thought
prefer to avoid these terms. The broadest term is
“dominion theology.”
There are many people who espouse dominion
theology who are not theonomists, and there are
theonomists who are not “Tylerites.” In fact, they are
very loudly not Tylerites. They will go out of their way
to buttonhole people to tell them the extent to which
they are not Tylerites. They have come close to
defining themselves and their ministries as “not being
Tylerite.” (There is a scene in the old “Dracula” movie
when the professor flashes a crucifix at Bela Lugosi, who
immediately turns aside and pulls his cape over his face.
I think of this scene whenever I think of these men
telling others about Tyler. Some day I would like to
flash a “Welcome to Tyler” sign in front of them, just to
see what happens.) I know several of them who might
someday be willing to start churches with names like
“The First Not Tylerite Church of . . .” I know another
who thinks of his group as “The First 11 A.M. Sunday
Morning Not Tylerite Bible Study . . .” They will
therefore not appreciate Chilton’s book. They will
blame Chilton for adopting ideas that have been
distributed from East Texas. Even though they might
otherwise have agreed with his arguments, they are
infected with a serious case of NDH – “Not Discovered
Here” – a common malady among intellectuals.
In short, they may attack The Days of Vengeance when
they are really after Jordan and Sutton. Readers should
be aware of this possibility well in advance. There is
more to this book than meets the eye.
Two things make the Tyler theology unique in the
Christian Reconstruction camp: (1) its heavy accent
on the church, with weekly Communion; and (2) its
heavy use of the five-point covenant model. Covenant
theology, especially the church covenant, has not been
a major focus in the writings of some of the non-Tyler
leaders of the Christian Reconstruction movement.
Theologically speaking the original “four points of
Christian Reconstructionism” that Chilton and I have
summarized – providence (sovereignty of God),
Biblical presuppositionalism (Van Til’s apologetics: the
Bible is the starting point and final court of appeal),
eschatological optimism (postmillennialism), and
Biblical law (theonomy) – were insufficient. The fifth
point, covenantalism, and specifically Sutton’s fivepoint
model, was added in late 1985 to complete the
theological outline.
The Days of Vengeance is especially concerned with the
Revelation’s covenant structure and the historical focus
of its judgment passages. If, as Chilton argues so
brilliantly, these passages of imminent doom and gloom
relate to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A. D., then there is
no legitimate way to build a case for a Great Tribulation
ahead of us. It is long behind us. Thus, the Book of
Revelation cannot legitimately be used to buttress the
5. Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments
(Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986).
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