Be sure to read the first part of this installment on the Gap Doctrine of modern Dominionism (i.e. Postmillennialism). In my July 2012 debate with Joel McDurmon of American Vision, McDurmon argued that Abraham never received the land promised to him, and will not receive that land until he is physically raised from the dead. I have and do argue that this creates a Gap Doctrine, that is very similar to the Dispensational Gap Doctrine. This article continues that, but, be sure to #1” href=”http://donkpreston.com/dispensational-dominionism-3-the-gap-doctrine/” target=”_blank”>read #1 here.
A book of that debate is now available on Kindle, in DVD, and in paper form.
We continue now with an examination of the Dominionist Gap Doctrine demanded by McDurmon’s argument that Abraham never received the land promised to him.
In John 8:56, Jesus spoke of the promises to Abraham, and he said “Abraham longed to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad.” Now, if the Dominionists are right, the promises to Abraham still have not been fulfilled, two thousand years later. So, why was Abraham so glad to see Jesus’ day, if the appearance of Jesus meant he was going to have to wait at least another two millennia?
But you see, the Dominionists stick another gap between Jesus’ day, and the fulfillment of Abraham’s promises. But this will not work, because Hebrews 11, definitively shows that what Abraham longed for, the consummation of his ultimate hope, had drawn near.
What Hebrews 11 shows, and which I developed in the debate with McDurmon, is that Abraham saw the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises to him as first of all as spiritual, not related to physical dirt, and secondly, he saw the ultimate promises as far off from his day (Hebrews 11:11-16).
Abraham did long for the resurrection. Of this there is no doubt (Hebrews 11:35). That promise was spiritual. That promise was far from his day. That promise belonged to Jesus’ day! And as I demonstrated irrefutably in the debate, that consummative resurrection hope was to be fulfilled on Messianic Zion (Isaiah 25:6f). What is so powerful, catch this, is that the Hebrews author said his audience had arrived at Zion! And Joel even admitted that the first century audience had arrived at Zion. But of course, he then invented another Zion that still has to come! This is unmitigated eisegesis.
Thus, we have positive proof, of the following:
The land promise itself was not to Abraham personally, but to him through his seed, and that promise was fulfilled. McDurmon’s attempt to pit Acts 7:7 against the united testimony of the rest of scripture is clearly misguided and wrong. He completely missed the point of Stephen’s speech.
The ultimate promise to which Abraham looked was the resurrection and the city “Zion.”
Jesus said Abraham longed to see his day, which means the time for the fulfillment of Abraham’s ultimate hope was Jesus’ day.
Abraham’s ultimate hope was spiritual, to be fulfilled in Zion, and the first century church had arrived at Zion.
Thus, the initial land promise to Abraham was fulfilled in his seed, just as promised. And, the ultimate land promise to Abraham was fulfilled when the new heaven and earth (Revelation 21) arrived in AD 70, which, by the way, McDurmon and most Postmillennialists agree happened!
Side bar: McDurmon and most Dominionists claim there was a “typological fulfillment” of the New Creation, i.e. the Abrahamic promises, in AD 70. Gentry, contra McDurmon, actually says Abraham received what was promised him in AD 70.
Commenting on Revelation 21, Gentry says “John sees the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to earth in the establishment of Christianity (Revelation 21:1-2). This was the heavenly city that Abraham ultimately sought beyond the temporal (and typical) Promised land (Hebrews 11:10, 16). (2009, 147). He adds: “The Heavenly Jerusalem is the bride of Christ that comes down from God to replace the earthly Jerusalem (Rev 21:2-5) in the first century (Rev 1:1, 3; 22:6, 10). With the shaking and destruction of the old Jerusalem in AD 70, the heavenly (recreated) Jerusalem replaces her.” (He Shall Have Dominion, 2009, 367).
You just have to catch the power of this! Gentry says the physical land was typological of the spiritual city that Abraham received in AD 70. But, per McDurmon (and of necessity of Gentry as well) the spiritual inheritance that Abraham received in AD 70 was in fact typological of the physical land that Abraham will receive at the end of human history! You simply must read my new book AD 70 A Shadow of the “Real” End? in which I prove conclusively that AD 70 was not a type or shadow of a future eschatology. This book has already been called “conslusive” by some readers. There is not another book like it anywhere! You can get the Kindle version here.
There is not one shred of evidence to suggest that Abraham looked beyond the spiritual city- that he inherited in AD 70- to a physical city and land after the end of human history. McDurmon could not produce that proof in our debate and there is no proof to be had. This is a fabricated gap theology.
Israel’s entrance into the land was typological of salvation, which arrived in AD 70 we are told. However, AD 70 was also typological of the real, the final fulfillment. So, we have the physical typifying the spiritual, which in turn typifies the physical after all! This is truly “unbelievable.” See my new book, AD 70: A Shadow of the “Real” End? available now on Kindle. You can order your copy today, here. This book is a definitive refutation of the Dominionist claim that AD 70 was a foreshadowing of the end of the Christian age.
In conclusion: both Dispensationalist and Dominionist say that God’s promises to Abraham were not fulfilled.
Both paradigms posit a huge temporal gap between promise and fulfillment. While the Dominionists deny that the time for the fulfillment of the promise was actually the first century, but was postponed due to Jewish unbelief, they nonetheless deny that the deny that the time of fulfillment was the first century. This denies Jesus’ (and John the Baptizer’s) claim that the time for the kingdom had arrived, and, it denies Jesus’ words that Abraham longed to see Jesus’ day, i.e. as the time of fulfillment.
So, while there are some slightly nuanced differences in the “Gap Theology” of the Dispensationalists and the Dominionists, it is irrefutably true that the Dominionists do posit a 4000 year (and counting!) gap between promise and fulfillment. And it is undeniably true that they deny that the time of fulfillment was to be the first century.
In both instances, the Dominionist theology is false.