Not ‘already / not yet.’

Not ‘already / not yet.’

Amillennialists contend that Jesus’ kingdom of God is only here in some sense and in an eschatological tension between the “already” and the “not yet” regarding its fulfillment and someday future establishment—i.e., consummation. Here’s how they say this in their own words:

  • “the kingdom of God is now hidden  . . . . to all except those who have faith in Christ . . . . but some day it shall be totally revealed . . . . when the final phase of the kingdom is ushered in by the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.” (Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future, (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 1979, 1991), 52.)
  • We await the kingdom’s “final establishment . . . at the time of Christ’s Second Coming,” (Ibid., ix) as well as the “final judgment” and “final stage” (Ibid., 1) “at the end of history” (Ibid., 253) “at the end of this present age . . . . at the time of Christ’s Second Coming” (Ibid., 255).
  • Today we are “living between the times” of the “‘already of the coming of the kingdom” and “the ‘not yet’ of its consummation” (Guenther Hass, “The Significance of Eschatology for Christian Ethics,” in David W. Baker, ed., Looking into the Future: Evangelical Studies in Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Academic, 2001), 326).
  • This interim time is the time of the “semirealized kingdom” (Vern S. Poythress, Understanding Dispensationalists, (Phillipsburg, NJ.: P& R Publishing, 1987, 1994), 36).
  • “The Bible favors the idea that the present dispensation of the kingdom of God will be followed immediately by the kingdom of God in its consummate and eternal form” (J. Marcellus Kik, An Eschatology of Victory (Phillipsburg, NJ.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1971), 3, in a quotation from D.H. Kromminga, Millennium in the Church, pp. 257, 258).
  • “God’s great plan . . . . includes not only the salvation of individuals and the redemption of the church but also the reestablishment of God’s kingdom of righteousness, peace, and justice in a new heaven and a new earth” (Paul G. Hiebert, in Forward to, Arthur F. Glasser, Announcing the Kingdom (Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Academic, 2003), 8.)
  • “whose Kingdom rule is already established and not yet fulfilled. (Ibid., 123) . . . . the coming of Jesus . . . [was] his inauguration of the Kingdom of God (Ibid., 141) . . . . We are constantly faced with the ‘not yet’ existence of the Kingdom of God” (Ibid., 343).

The huge problem here is, Scripture never uses this type of qualifying terminology, and for good reason.

Sources:

1  A Once-Mighty Faith (future book – est. 2014-2015) by John Noe

2 The Bible and the Future by Anthony A. Hoekema

3 “The Significance of Eschatology for Christian Ethics” by Guenther Hass, in David W. Baker, ed., Looking into the Future: Evangelical Studies in Eschatology

4 Understanding Dispensationalists by Vern S. Poythress,

5 An Eschatology of Victory by J. Marcellus Kik,

6 Announcing the Kingdom by Arthur F. Glasser