The Bible and the Future

Anthony A. Hoekema

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 1994
• ISBN:
  9781467426480
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Eschatology

Writing from the perspective that the coming of God's kingdom is both present and future, Hoekema covers the full range of eschatological topics in this comprehensive biblical exposition. The two major sections of the book deal with inaugurated eschatology (the "already") and future eschatology (the "not yet"). Detailed appendix, bibliography, and indexes.

PART I

Inaugurated Eschatology

The term eschatology comes from two Greek words, eschatos and logos, meaning “doctrine of the last things.” Customarily it has been understood as referring to events which are still to happen, both in relation to the individual and to the world. With respect to the individual, eschatology was thought to concern itself with such matters as physical death, immortality, and the so-called “intermediate state”—the state between death and the general resurrection. With respect to the world, eschatology was seen as dealing with the return of Christ, the general resurrection, the final judgment, and the final state. While agreeing that biblical eschatology includes the matters mentioned above, we must insist that the message of biblical eschatology will be seriously impoverished if we do not include in it the present state of the believer and the present phase of the kingdom of God. In other words, full-orbed biblical eschatology must include both what we might call “inaugurated”¹ and “future”² eschatology.

In this section I shall treat several basic ideas relating to the present state of the kingdom. Chapters 1 and 2 consider in detail the eschatological outlook of the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament abounds with prophecies concerning future blessings for Israel. In the New Testament many, yet not all, of these prophecies are fulfilled in the person of Christ. It becomes obvious, therefore, that some prophecies will find fulfillment only in the Second Coming. Chapter 3 discusses the purpose of history and the goal toward which it moves, with Christ at the center and God in control. The remaining chapters in this part deal with the nature and meaning of the kingdom of God, the role of the Holy Spirit in eschatology, and the tension between present and future realities.

1. This expression, which is to be preferred to “realized eschatology” (for reasons which will be elaborated later), refers to the believer’s present enjoyment of eschatological blessings.

2. By this term is meant the eschatological events that are still future.

CHAPTER 1

The Eschatological Outlook of the Old Testament

PROPERLY TO UNDERSTAND BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY, WE must see it as an integral aspect of all of biblical revelation. Eschatology must not be thought of as something which is found only in, say, such Bible books as Daniel and Revelation, but as dominating and permeating the entire message of the Bible. On this point Jürgen Moltmann is certainly correct: “From first to last, and not merely in the epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving, and therefore also revolutionizing and transforming the present. The eschatological is not one element of Christianity, but it is the medium of the Christian faith as such, the key in which everything in it is set.… Hence eschatology cannot really be only a part of Christian doctrine. Rather, the eschatological outlook is characteristic of all Christian proclamation, and of every Christian existence and of the whole Church.”¹

In order to understand this point, let us take a closer look at the eschatological nature of the biblical message as a whole. In this chapter we shall be looking at the eschatological outlook of the Old Testament; in the next chapter we shall be concerning ourselves with the eschatological perspective of the New Testament.

It has often been said, by biblical scholars who stand in the liberal tradition, that there is very little eschatology in the Old Testament. It must be granted, of course, that Old Testament writers do not give us clear teachings on most of the major doctrines of what we have called “future eschatology”: life after death, the Second Coming of Christ, the final judgment, and so on. Yet there is another sense in which the Old Testament is eschatologically oriented from beginning to end. George Ladd puts it this way:

It follows that Israel’s hope of the Kingdom of God is an eschatological hope, and that eschatology is a necessary corollary to Israel’s view of God. The older Wellhausenian criticism insisted that eschatology was a late development which emerged only in postexilic times.… Recently the pendulum has been swinging in the other direction and the fundamental Israelitic character of eschatology recognized. An increasing number of scholars can be cited who recognize that it was the concept of God who had been concerned with Israel in redemptive history which gave rise to the eschatological hope.²

One of the recent scholars cited by Ladd is T. C. Vriezen, who is Professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of Utrecht. Vriezen comments that the eschatological vision which one finds in the Old Testament is “an Israelite phenomenon which has not really been found outside Israel.”³ He goes on to say,

Eschatology did not arise when people began to doubt the actuality of God’s kingship in the cult, but when they had to learn in the greatest distress to rely, in faith alone, on God as the only firm basis of life and when this realism of faith was directed critically against the life of the people so that the coming catastrophe was looked upon as a divine intervention full of justice and also so that it was confessed that the Holy God remained unshakable in His fidelity and love to Israel. Thus the life of Israel in history came to have a double aspect: on the one hand judgment was looked upon as near at hand and the re-creation of the community of God as approaching.… Eschatology is a religious certainty which springs directly from the Israelite faith in God as rooted in the history of its salvation.⁴

Vriezen therefore finds eschatology to be integral to the message of both the Old and the New Testaments: “At the heart of the Old Testament message lies the expectation of the Kingdom of God, and it is the initial fulfillment of this expectation in Jesus of Nazareth … that underlies the message of the New Testament. The true heart of both Old Testament and New Testament is, therefore, the eschatological perspective.”⁵

Let us now examine the eschatological outlook of the Old Testament in greater detail by looking at some specific revelational concepts in which that outlook is embodied. We begin with the expectation of the coming redeemer. The narrative of the fall found in the opening verses of Genesis 3 is followed immediately by the promise of a future redeemer in verse 15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This passage, often called the “mother promise,” now sets the tone for the entire Old Testament. The words are addressed to the serpent, later identified as an agent of Satan (Rev. 12:9; 20:2). The enmity placed between mankind and the serpent implies that God, who is also the serpent’s enemy, will be man’s friend. In the prediction that ultimately the seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head we have the promise of the coming redeemer. We may say that in this passage God reveals, as in a nutshell, all of his saving purpose with his people. The further history of redemption will be an unfolding of the contents of this mother promise. From this point on, all of Old Testament revelation looks forward, points forward, and eagerly awaits the promised redeemer.

This coming redeemer, described in Genesis 3:15 merely as the seed of the woman, is designated as the seed of Abraham in Genesis 22:18 (cf. 26:4; 28:14). Genesis 49:10 further specifies that the redeemer shall be a descendant of the tribe of Judah. Still later in the course of Old Testament revelation we learn that the coming redeemer will be a descendant of David (II Sam. 7:12-13).

After the establishment of the monarchy, the Old Testament people of God recognized three special offices: those of prophet, priest, and king. The coming redeemer was expected to be the culmination and fulfillment of all three of these special offices. He was to be a great prophet: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me [Moses] from among you, from your brethren—him you shall heed” (Deut. 18:15). He was to be an everlasting priest: “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek’” (Ps. 110:4). He was also to be the great king of his people: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you …” (Zech. 9:9).

In connection with the kingship of the coming redeemer, it is particularly predicted that he will sit on the throne of David. To David Nathan the prophet said, “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever” (II Sam. 7:12-13; cf. Isa. 9:7).

We may also note that sometimes the coming of the future Redeemer King is identified with the coming of God to his people. In Isaiah 7:14, for example, the coming redeemer is specifically called Immanuel, which means “God with us.” In Isaiah 9:6 one of the names given to the promised redeemer is “Mighty God.” A. B. Davidson comments on this in the following words: “Sometimes the coming [of Jehovah] is accomplished in the line of the Messianic hope—Jehovah comes down among His people in the Messiah, His presence is manifested and realised in him.… God is fully present, for purposes of redemption, in the Messianic king. This is the loftiest Messianic conception.”⁶

Alongside of the conception of the coming redeemer as one who will be a prophet, a priest, and a king, however, there appears in Isaiah also the view that the redeemer will be the suffering servant of God. The concept “servant of the Lord” appears frequently in Isaiah, and sometimes designates the nation of Israel while at other times it describes the coming redeemer. Among the Isaianic passages which specifically describe the coming Messiah as the servant of the Lord are 42:1-4, 49:5-7, 52:13-15, and all of 53. It is particularly Isaiah 53 which pictures the coming redeemer as the suffering servant of Jehovah: “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed” (v. 5). From passages of this sort we learn that the redeemer to whose coming the Old Testament believer looked forward was thought of, at least in the times of the later prophets, as one who would suffer for his people in order to redeem them.

Another way in which the Old Testament depicts the coming of the redeemer is as the son of man. We find this type of expectation particularly in Daniel 7:13-14,

I saw in the night visions,

and behold, with the clouds of heaven

there came one like a son of man,

and he came to the Ancient of Days

and was presented before him.

And to him was given dominion

and glory and kingdom,

that all peoples, nations, and languages

should serve him;

his dominion is an everlasting dominion,

which shall not pass away,

and his kingdom one

that shall not be destroyed.

In the New Testament the Son of Man is particularly identified with the Messiah.

In summary, we may say that the Old Testament believer, in various ways and by means of various figures, looked for a redeemer who was to come sometime in the future (or in “the last days,” to use a common Old Testament figure of speech) to redeem his people and to be a light to the Gentiles as well. Peter in his first epistle gives us a vivid picture of the way the Old Testament prophets looked forward to the coming of this Messianic redeemer: “Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow” (I Pet. 1:10-11, NIV).

Another revelational concept in which the eschatological outlook of the Old Testament is embodied is that of the kingdom of God. Though the term “kingdom of God” is not found in the Old Testament, the thought that God is king is found, particularly in the Psalms and in the prophets. God is frequently spoken of as King, both of Israel (Deut. 33:5; Ps. 84:3; 145:1; Isa. 43:15) and of the whole earth (Ps. 29:10; 47:2; 96:10; 97:1; 103:19; 145:11-13; Isa. 6:5; Jer. 46:18). Because of the sinfulness and rebelliousness of men, however, God’s rule is realized only imperfectly in Israel’s history. Therefore the prophets looked forward to a day when God’s rule would be fully...