Wednesday, February 21, 2007

No Greater Anti-Semitism

Keith A. Mathison, director of curriculum development for Ligonier Ministries, initiated a firestorm of controversy within the preterist community with the book he edited: When Shall These Things Be? (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing Company, 2004). One reader leveling charges of inaccuracy and slander writes: “What Mathison does … is absolutely disgusting and twisted and … a deliberate attempt to prejudice the reader…” A defensive Mathison responds: "Although the view may have been held at an earlier date by some obscure individual or group, one of the first open proponents of hyper-preterism was John Humphrey Noyes (1811–86), the founder of the Oneida Community. … This is significant because it means that not only was John Humphrey Noyes an early proponent of hyper-preterism, but that his hyper-preterist doctrine also influenced the eschatological writings of another hyper-preterist author (Hampden-Cook) whose book continues to influence hyper-preterist authors to this day. Modern hyper-preterists do not seem to have any difficulty acknowledging Russell or Hampden-Cook as early proponents of hyper-preterism. The fact of the matter is that Noyes was another early proponent of hyper-preterism, and an influential one at that” (John Humphrey Noyes and Hyper-Preterism, Keith A. Mathison).

Preterists of every variant are attempting to distance themselves from Noyes. But they have a problem; they share a common hermeneutic: “70 AD.” Convinced that The Kingdom of God has come, they spiritualize or ignore Scripture as required to support that presupposition. And like Noyes, all who replace His Word with the apocrypha of “70 AD” will, without exception, suffer loss. As wisdom is justified by her children, so too Preterism:

In the nineteenth century there were innumerable attempts to set up ideal societies, often based on heretical versions of Christianity. So John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida community, convinced himself from his devoted reading of scripture that the teachings of the Old Testament had been abrogated since the year A.D. 70 (The Dictionary of the History of Ideas, University of Virginia Library).
…Noyes was licensed to preach in August, 1833. At about the same time, he made a sensational discovery: Jesus Christ had announced that He would return during the lifetime of some of His disciples. Jesus could not have been mistaken; therefore the Second Coming of Christ had taken place in A.D. 70. The "Jewish cycle" of religious history then ended and a “Gentile cyclebegan. … We live no longer in an age of prophecy and promise, but in an age of fulfillment. Perfect holiness is attainable in this life, as well as guaranteed deliverance from sin (The Great Oneida Love-in, American Heritage Magazine, February 1969 Volume 20, Issue 2).
At the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews as a nation were judged. Then the kingdom of heaven passed from the Jews to the Gentiles. Matt., 21: 43 (Hand-Book of the Oneida Community, Wallingford, Conn: Office of the Circular, Wallingford Community, 1867, emphasis added).
Communism, as held at Oneida, cannot for a moment be dissevered from its theology. … the doctrine of, Complete Regeneration, or Salvation from Sin, and the truth that the Second Coming of Christ, and the founding of his heavenly kingdom, took place 1800 years ago (Hand-Book of the Oneida Community, Wallingford, Conn: Office of the Circular, Wallingford Community, 1867, emphasis added).

Noyes' teachings were practiced here by the community. The main teaching which received the most criticism was that of "Complex Marriage." In Complex Marriage, every man was married to every woman and vice versa. … no two people could have exclusive attachment with each other because it would be selfish and idolatrous (Randall Hillebrand, “The Oneida Community,” New York History Net, emphasis added).

The rumors of strange sex practices roused the righteous and … churches demanded action against “the ethics of the barnyard,” and sought enabling legislation from the state (The Great Oneida Love-in, American Heritage Magazine, February 1969 Volume 20, Issue2, emphasis added)
Within the commune, there was a debate about when children should be initiated into sexual rituals, and by whom. Noyes (who was very old at the time) thought he should be the person to initiate sexual intercourse with girls as young as fourteen (Wikipedia, Oneida Society, 4/1/2005, emphasis added).
It is distasteful to write of such things, even as it was for Paul to write of a similar circumstance in a letter to the Corinthians: “It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.” And this Paul wrote in the Spirit! But one thing is even more distasteful: the wind of doctrine that regards the One who spoke light and every other created thing into existence and continues to uphold them by the power of His Word as incapable of expressing Himself in literal words! The Bible contains thousands of promises and blessings, the majority regarding Jews as a people and a nation.

Yet, Mathison and Noyes and Gentry and Sproul and Preterists of every variant who replace His Word with the apocrypha of “70 AD,enthusiastically affirming every literal curse of those called by His name and spiritualizing every literal blessing conferred upon the apple of His eye, will without exception suffer loss! There is no greater anti-Semitism, nor could there be, than what Preterism teaches: that God keeps all His promises except those regarding Jews and their nation
God made His covenant with the nation of Israel and He made promises to them that are absolutely, totally, and entirely unconditional. … it was the most binding of all covenants. … when it came time to walk between the pieces of the slain sacrifice, God put Abraham to sleep! When He did that, He voided any part of the people of Israel in the covenant. They had nothing to do with it, absolutely nothing. God said I will make my covenant with my people alone and He swore by Himself rather than anyone greater because there was no greater and he made a covenant with the nation of Israel that is absolutely unconditional. There is only one way that covenant could be broken and that is if God were dethroned or God was dead. Obviously He never will be (The Valley Church, emphasis added).14

14The Valley Church, Conflict of the Ages, 5/11//75, (audio tape).

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