Smoodock's Blog

The predominant view of futurist eschatology is that Jesus absolutely must return to this earth and set up or establish a physical Kingdom of God, wherein he will reign as the Messiah in a visible, physical body on a physical throne from physical Jerusalem. I have been in recent months repudiating that point of view, saying that Jesus has already returned and has already established his Kingdom in 70 AD, when he came in the clouds, as he said he would (Matthew 26:64). At that time he judged Jerusalem and destroyed its Temple in the person of the Roman general, Titus, and his armies. Of course, such a ‘Second Coming’ was not visible with one’s eyes, but it was perceived, in that, the destruction of Jerusalem was the sign of Christ’s presence in heaven (Matthew 24:3, 30).

The prophet, Ezekiel, promised that the Lord would make a new and everlasting covenant with his people (Ezekiel 37:26) in the days when he would set David (i.e. the Messiah) over them (Ezekiel 37:24-25). This same covenant is mentioned by Jeremiah:

Behold, the days come, says Jehovah, that I will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I cut with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which covenant of Mine they broke, although I was a husband to them, says Jehovah; but this shall be the covenant that I will cut with the house of Israel: After those days, says Jehovah, I will put My Law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall no more teach each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says Jehovah. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more. (Jeremiah 31:31-34; emphasis mine)

In what way would the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31 be different from the Mosaic Covenant? Well, Jeremiah does quote God as saying his Law would be written in the hearts of his people (verse-33). This certainly seems like he is speaking of a spiritual covenant, rather than a physical one. Paul, himself, appears to be drawing from Jeremiah 31:33, when he claimed the Corinthians were the “the epistle of Christ… written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart” (2Corinthians 3:3). In other words, they were guided by or ruled by what was in their hearts (cf. Luke 17:20-21). If the New Covenant that Jeremiah promised (Jeremiah 31:31-33) is established in man’s heart, shouldn’t that demand a spiritual Kingdom that comes not with observation, but is found within man? If not, why not?

Paul goes on to describe the New Covenant in terms of the heart:

For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (2 Corinthians 5:14-17)

We are ruled by our love for the Lord and reckon, because Christ died in our stead, we are dead, for all intents and purposes to the Old Covenant. Therefore, our lives are not lived to save ourselves (under the Old Covenant) but to live for Christ in the New Covenant of love. Although we once knew Christ out of the Old Covenant (i.e. according to the flesh), from henceforth know we him in that manner no more, because he has arrived. We have seen (believed) what he has done. We know the Reality, no longer the shadows (cf. Colossians 2:16-17). Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, (as opposed to in Moses), he is a new creature—“Old things are passed away… all things have become New!” In other words, he who is ruled by Christ is a new creature (part of the ‘new creation’ or the ‘new covenant’), and he is no longer governed by the ‘old things’ i.e. the Old Covenant.

Understanding this, how would a futurist, physical Kingdom, with a physical Temple, and a physical rule of Christ in a physical body enhance what we already have in him. If the physical foreshadowed the spiritual (cf. Colossians 2:16-17), in what biblical manner should we understand the spiritual foreshadowing and giving way to the physical?