EpisTheology

16/10/2025

Jesus is not an Amillennialist.
He is not a Replacement Theologian/Supersessionist.

16/10/2025

Was Jesus an Amillennialist?

No. Not at all.

Did Jesus promise a kingdom AND THEN TAKE IT AWAY because Israel didn’t believe when He prophesied their unbelief and His own ex*****on because it was going to happen, and even prophesied the betrayal of one Jew named Judas, and even prophesied the amount of money for which the Messiah would be sold?

No.

Israel’s rejection of Christ was written by God.

It doesn’t diminish their guilt, and was not a reason to cancel the promises.

In fact, it was necessary for the fulfillment of the promises that He bear sin and rise from the dead.

Jesus was no Amillennialist.

And He also knew what God knows, that no people and no person can believe apart from God’s sovereign election.

Sinners are willing in the day of His power, says the Old Testament.

If God cancelled promises because sinners didn’t do what sinners can’t do, then this is complete folly.

The cross was the plan, not an afterthought and not plan B.

The kingdom is not conditional on what men do.

History is God’s story.

He writes it, and He wrote into it His rejection and His crucifixion and His resurrection.

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 4
May 20, 2007

15/10/2025

"At the end of Luke’s gospel in the twenty-fourth chapter, verse 25, He said to those disciples on the road, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?”

The Old Testament promised the suffering of Christ.

The Old Testament promised the crucifixion of Christ.

Psalm 22 describes it, Isaiah 53 describes it, the sacrificial system of the Old Testament typifies it, Zechariah 12:10 talks about Him being pierced.

Luke 24:44, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets in the Psalms must be fulfilled,” including that Christ should suffer and rise again the third day.

The Old Testament prophesied His resurrection, Psalm 16: “You will not allow Your Holy One to see corruption, but show Him the path of life.”

The cross was the plan. It is not an afterthought, it is not an adjustment to Jewish apostasy, it is the plan.

Listen to our Lord’s words in Luke 18:31, “He took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘Behold, we’re going to Jerusalem, and all things which are written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished. He will be delivered to the Gentiles, will be mocked and mistreated and spit upon, and after they have scourged Him, they will kill Him;” – Matthew says crucify Him – “and the third day He will rise again.”

He says that will happen. He predicted every detail of His suffering and His death. The cross is the plan; it is not an afterthought, it is not Plan B.

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 4
May 20, 2007

15/10/2025

"So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?”

«« Acts 1:6 »»

This is [Jesus]'s perfect opportunity to announce that He is Amillennial.

His perfect opportunity to affirm Replacement Theology, or as scholars call it, Supersessionism where the church supersedes Israel.

This is His moment to establish once and for all there will be no earthly kingdom for Israel, no national fulfillment of Abrahamic, Davidic, and new covenant promises, to tell them all the church will come, the church will receive all of the promises.

And what was once physical promises will become spiritual promises, because Israel has rejected Him and crucified Him.

This was the perfect time to say,

“Don’t you know that, that was only going to happen if Israel received Me? What they did to Me cancels everything. Forget all those Old Testament prophecies and covenants made to Israel, forget the idea that Israel is God’s elect; no more, it’s all cancelled.”

Well, all Jesus says is,

“It’s not for you to know times and seasons...”

That’s all.

Think this one through:

If Israel’s rejection of Christ, apostasy, and crucifixion of Christ cancelled the kingdom for them, then we would have assumed that if they wanted to receive the kingdom, they would have had to embrace Christ and not kill Christ.

And if that had occurred, then there would be no salvation for anybody.

Are we to assume then that the cross is an adjustment?
Plan B?
A contingency?
A reaction to an apostatizing Israel?

Did He not Himself say that He was born to die? Did He come to give His life a ransom?

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 4
May 20, 2007

14/10/2025

Was Jesus An Amillennialist?

==========

If it no longer is to be believed that there is a real kingdom for Israel as defined by the Old Testament, the shift probably should come with Jesus.

Turn to Acts 1.

This is, to put it mildly, an extremely definitive text.

It is a text that one is hard-pressed to get around if one wants to hold to the cancellation of God’s promises and Replacement Theology.

This is post-cross, this is post-resurrection; therefore, it is post-rejection, it is post-apostasy.

It is after our Lord has said, “Your house is left to you desolate,” Luke 13.

It is after our Lord has said, “I will not answer your questions. You have enough light, you’ve rejected the light; I will give you no more light.”

It is after the Lord has pronounced a judgment on their apostasy.

It is after the fickle crowd who hailed Him through most of the week, turned on Him and screamed for His blood on Friday, calling, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

It is after Israel’s apostasy.

Okay?

That’s important.

In fact, Jesus has died, He has risen. And now we read in verse 3, “To the apostles whom He had chosen,” mentioned in verse 2 “He presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days.”

Now we’re in to the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension, Israel’s apostasy is set.

In fact we remember, don’t we, that Jesus already declared in the 19th chapter of Luke, verses 41 to 44, that there would be a siege against Jerusalem.

He predicts the destruction of Jerusalem and reiterates it later in Luke’s gospel before He was crucified.

Judgement has already been pronounced on Israel.

And so, during this 40 days, Jesus is speaking.

What’s He speaking about? Listen to this,

“speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God. And gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, ‘Which,’ He said, ‘you heard of from Me; for John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’”

For forty days, okay, 40, He taught them concerning the kingdom of God.

Verse 6, here’s the telling verse: “So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying,” – listen to this question –

"Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?"

Do you understand the importance of that question?

They had just had forty days of instruction about the kingdom of God, and after forty days of instruction concerning the kingdom of God, they only had one question.

And the question is NOT, “Why did You cancel the kingdom?”

The question is NOT, “Why is the kingdom now spiritual and not for Israel?”

They have one question, verse 6: “Is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?”

He must, in forty days, have affirmed to them unmistakably that the kingdom promised to Israel was still coming.

The only question was “When?”

It’s unmistakable.

And this is His response in verse 7:

“Where did you get that crazy idea?” Is that what it says?

“Where did you get that wacky notion? Have I wasted My forty days trying to tell you that you’ve been replaced, and you don’t get it? You blockheads.”

No. He said to them, “It’s not for you to know” – what? – “times, seasons, which the Father has fixed by His own authority.”

In verse 6 they use the word “restoring.” This Greek verb apokathistano means “to restore.”

And interestingly enough, in all Jewish sources it is a technical eschatological term for the end time. They’re asking an eschatological question: “Is it at this time that the final kingdom promised to Israel will come?”

And Jesus’ only answer is, “It’s not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed, set, appointed.”

By the way, that in the Greek, that is tithēmi, an aorist middle, which means “reflexive,” “fixed for Himself by His own authority.” So the idea of “by His own authority” is intensified by the middle voice which is reflective in the Greek language.

“The time that the Father has fixed for Himself by His own authority is not for you to know.”

If Jesus was an Amillennialist, this is the moment in which He must declare Himself.

This is the perfect question for Him to answer by saying, “Didn’t you hear what I’ve been saying for forty days? It’s cancelled, it’s not going to happen. I am now an Amillennialist. And that’s what you all need to be. You have been replaced by a yet to be identified new redeemed people called the church, made up of Jew and Gentile.”

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 4
May 20, 2007

14/10/2025

“Behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh,
“When the plowman will overtake the reaper
And the treader of grapes him who sows seed;
When the mountains will drip sweet wine
And all the hills will melt.

Also I will restore the captivity of My people Israel,
And they will rebuild the desolated cities and live in them;
They will also plant vineyards and drink their wine
And make gardens and eat their fruit.

I will also plant them on their land,
And they will not again be uprooted from their land
Which I have given them,”
Says Yahweh your God.

«« Amos 9:13-15 »»

Nothing in the Old Testament gives any hint of the cancellation of kingdom promises, which include the land, the primacy, the reigning Messiah, salvation, and all of those things.

Nothing in the Old Testament hints at it.

Nothing in the four hundred years between the Old and the New Testament developing in Jewish theology indicates that there was any sense in which anyone interpreted it any differently than that.

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 4
May 20, 2007

14/10/2025

Neither were they Postmillennial, which is just a positive spin of Amillennialism.

11/10/2025

Were the Jews of Jesus’ day Amillennial?

======

"And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He visited and accomplished redemption for His people, And raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant—As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old—Salvation from our enemies, And from the hand of all who hate us, To show mercy toward our fathers, And to remember His holy covenant, The oath which He swore to Abraham our father, To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, Might serve Him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days."

«« Luke 1:67-75 »»

Of course, Zacharias would have assumed that all of that would have happened at His first coming.

The fact that it didn’t happen at His first coming is no justification to assume that it will never happen and that some other people have taken Israel’s place.

They understood that when Messiah comes, salvation comes to Israel, and the fulfillment of Davidic and Abrahamic promise and new covenant salvation.

All the verses in that benedictus of Zacharias, everything he says is built on Old Testament texts related either to the Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic covenant, or the new covenant.

It is Old Testament covenant language.

And the essence of what Zacharias is saying is, “Messiah comes; it’ll all be fulfilled.” This is what they expected.

Turn to Luke 17 for a moment. Pharisees were probably the most notable students of Scripture, assisted by the scribes who did the grunt work of the text and theology to provide them with the right beliefs.
Jesus, in this constant encounter with the Pharisees, is confronted here in Luke 17:20, “having been questioned by the Pharisees.”

And what is it they’re asking? As to when the kingdom of God was coming. Now what does that tell you?

That tells you that the Pharisees, the elite, the fundamentalists, the scholastics, the purveyors of Judaism to the populous believed that a real kingdom was coming.

That’s what they believed. That’s what they assumed.

Go to chapter 19, verse 11.

“And while they were listening to these things,”— this, of course, just after Jesus has left Jericho, and He has a great crowd to whom He is speaking — “He went on to tell a parable, because He was near Jerusalem, and they supposed that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately.”

What does that tell you about how they interpreted the Old Testament?
There was only one way to understand the Old Testament: a real kingdom is coming, and it’s going to come immediately.

The Pharisees want to know, “When is it coming?” And here they expect it to come immediately.

Remember now, this is just at the very beginning of the fever that starts to strike the crowd as Jesus approaches Jerusalem for His triumphal entry.

They think it’s coming and it’s coming now. He’s arrived finally to bring the promised kingdom.

There is no other way to understand the Old Testament promises.

The Old Testament is not Amillennial, and the generation of Jews at the time of our Lord were not Amillennial; they believed in the coming of the promised King and kingdom.

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 4
May 20, 2007

11/10/2025

Were the Jews of Jesus’ day Amillennial?

======

[The Jews on Jesus' day] also understood that there would be renovation of the world, because that’s what Isaiah said would happen.

They also understood there would be a general resurrection, Daniel 12, of the righteous, there would be final judgment; and they even understood that there would be a new heaven and a new earth, because that also is specifically prophesied by Isaiah.

So at the time of our Lord, nothing had changed in terms of how you interpret the Old Testament.

They interpreted the Old Testament in the normal sense anybody would interpret it, and their eschatology reflects that.

Luke 1:67. This is Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist; he’s filled with the Holy Spirit. He has been given a message that he’s going to be the father and his wife Elizabeth is going to be the mother of the great prophet who will be the forerunner of the Messiah, the herald of the Messiah.

Messiah is coming, he now knows that.

He will have a son, though he and his wife have been barren and they’re likely in their eighties and past the possibility of conceiving children. They’ve never been able to anyway, but now they will miraculously give birth to a son.

He will be the forerunner of the Messiah, therefore the Messiah is coming.

Zechariah is filled with praise, and he says this in verse 68:

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant.”

First thing they understood was the Messiah would come: He would come to reign, He would come to save, and He would come from the house of David.

That is to say, they understood literally and normally what the Old Testament prophesied.

Verse 70:

“As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old, salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us.”

This would result of the priority, the preeminence of Israel in the world. Instead of being abused and hated and embattled, they would rise to a time of glory.

“This God would do, showing mercy toward our fathers, to remember His holy covenant, the oath which He swore to Abraham our father, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.”

Pretty clear.

Here is an Old Testament priest. This man is a priest, Zacharias. He’s a priest like a whole lot of other people who function as priests in the land of Israel.

He is still in an Old Testament environment, pre-Christ.

He understands the Old Testament, he’s a student of the Old Testament; he as a priest is one who studies the Old Testament, teaches the Old Testament.

His understanding is this: the Messiah comes, the Messiah fulfills the promise of God to bring redemption to Israel, which we read about in Isaiah 44.

He comes as a horn of salvation. He comes in the house of David. He comes to assert the primacy of Israel. He comes to end the tortuous treatment that they have endured at the hand of all their enemies.

He comes to remember His holy covenant made to Abraham. He comes to grant holiness and righteousness. That’s all related to Old Testament kingdom promise.

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 4
May 20, 2007

10/10/2025

10/10/2025

“In what manner God would punish England if English government casts off all connections with Him?

I cannot tell whether He would punish us by some sudden blow such as defeat in war and the occupation of our territory by a foreign power.

Whether He would waste us away gradually and slowly by loss of commercial prosperity.

Whether He would break us to pieces by letting fools rule over us and allowing parliament to obey them.

Whether He would ruin us by sending a dearth of wise statesmen.

But one thing I am sure: the state that sows the seed of national neglect of God will sooner or later reap a harvest of national disaster and national ruin.”

— John Charles Ryle
1816 - 1900

09/10/2025

Were the Jews of Jesus’ day Amillennial?

Which is to ask the question, “How did people in the day of Jesus interpret the Old Testament?”

Had something happened in the four hundred years between the end of the Old Testament and the time of our Lord when the New Testament is being written?

Had something happened in that period of time to change the interpretation that they put on the Old Testament?

How did the Jews of Jesus’ day interpret the Old Testament promises?

This is an easy question to answer, very easy really.

And I want to give you a sort of summation of it and then take you to a couple of passages to look at it.

It was back in 1880 that a man named Emil Schurer, wrote a book on this very subject, 1880.

And Schurer had done a very definitive study on existing Jewish eschatology at the time of Jesus:

What did they believe about the future?

What did they believe about the promises of God?

It lays out Jewish eschatology and what they believed concerning Old Testament covenant promises.

Here’s the sum of it.

Messiah is coming, but His coming will be preceded by a time of severe trouble.

Sound familiar?

That’s what the Bible calls the Great Tribulation.

That’s what they believed even without the New Testament.

Jewish eschatology at the time of our Lord also believed that before Messiah comes Elijah, or one like Elijah, would come.

Jewish eschatology affirmed that Messiah comes, and He will be a son of David who will exercise power to set up His kingdom on earth in Israel and fulfill all the promises made to Abraham and the patriarchs and to David.

This study points out, as well, that Messiah in His coming and the establishment of His kingdom must wait for the repentance and salvation of Israel.

The Jews also believed that the Old Testament taught that the kingdom would be established in Israel and Jerusalem would be the capital city.
They also believed that dispersed Jews scattered around the world would be gathered from around the world into the land for that great kingdom.

They also believed that the messianic kingdom would extend to cover the whole earth, and the whole of human society around the world would be dominated by peace.

All people would worship Messiah, no one would resist Him, even those who did not worship Him in heart.

There would be no war, only joy, gladness, health, prosperity.

They also believed that the temple would be rebuilt, because that’s what Ezekiel says in Ezekiel 40 to 48, and temple worship would be at its apex.

The eschatology of the Jews at the time of our Lord is precisely the eschatology that I believe, because it’s what the Bible teaches.

They were just interpreting the Old Testament in its normal sense.

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 4
May 20, 2007