A Divisive Eschatology?

Have you ever listened to a preacher working through a book of Old Testament prophecy, and noticed that what he’s saying seems to have little connection to the actual words of the passage?  It’s not that what he says is unbiblical – he’s speaking about the Gospel, about Christ, about the Church – but try as you might, you just can’t see these things in this particular text.  For example:

“Yahweh said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by her companion and is an adulteress, even as Yahweh loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.” So I bargained for her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley. Then I said to her, “You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I will also be toward you.” For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or household idols. Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek Yahweh their God and David their king; and they will come in dread to Yahweh and to His goodness in the last days” (Hosea 3:1-5).

The meaning of the text seems clear, doesn’t it?  Hosea’s rebellious, sinful wife represents Israel in their state of apostasy and unbelief.  In this state they will “remain for many days”, suffering much as they are scattered among the nations.  Yet a time is coming “in the last days” when despite all this, they will repent, seeking both God and Christ, whom at present they have rejected.  As Hosea is to redeem his wife and restore her (we can assume she is repentant), so also God shall one day redeem and restore repentant Israel.  Israel will at last be brought to fear the Lord, and to know His goodness forevermore.  Elsewhere, the Old Testament speaks of the renewal of creation, and of an age in which Messiah shall reign over redeemed Israel – and over all the nations – in truth, righteousness, and justice.  Isn’t this our hope?

 

However, as you’re listening to the preacher, suddenly you’re confused.  He says something completely different.  He’s handling the passage like it’s a coded message.  “Israel” doesn’t mean Israel at all; it’s the Church.  All the talk of a restoration and beautification of the land is just figurative, poetic language.  It’s really all about the Gospel and individual salvation in our context today, and the exhortation is always a call to go and evangelise.  Week after week, the apparent richness and variety of Scripture is spiritualized away, and turned into the same vague generalities.

 

Obviously, there are wonderful applications for us as New Testament Christians in Old Testament texts like Hosea 3:1-5.  They bring us to a deeper understanding of God’s grace, longsuffering, and love for us, His people, in Christ.  But these are applications.  They are not what the text means in its original context, which speaks of God, and His relationship with Israel.  Application is not exegesis and interpretation.  How the text applies to us as Christians today is not the same question as what the text means.

 

Sadly, many preachers pay little attention to the original context.  Even where they bring valid applications, they often do so in a way that implies that this application is what the text means.  In other words, they skip proper exegesis and interpretation, and jump right to bringing the same old applications.  A lack of deep, meaningful study of the text is often readily apparent.  On this point, here’s a text all preachers should memorize:  “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).  But the issue here goes beyond merely a lack of study.

 

God Never Changes, God Never Lies

 

We are talking about what God has spoken to us.  The clarity of Scripture demands that when God speaks, He speaks clearly.  He doesn’t speak to us in code, or in riddles.  God gave us the Scriptures because He wants us to know Him.  “The secret things belong to Yahweh our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29).

 

Let’s give two truths which Christians must agree upon: 

1. God is truth itself, and therefore His Word is truth.  “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Numbers 23:19 ESV); “God… cannot lie” (Titus 1:2); “[I]t is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18); “Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth” (John 17:17).
2. God never changes; He is immutable.  “Of old You founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. Even they will perish, but You will remain; and all of them will wear out like a garment; like clothing You will change them and they will be changed. But You are the same, and Your years will not come to an end” (Psalm 102:25-27); “For I, Yahweh, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6); “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (James 1:17).

 Therefore, let’s give four principles for Biblical exegesis:

1. Interpreting Scripture requires careful exegesis, and it requires the help and illumination of the Holy Spirit.  But those two things are never contradictory to each other.  The Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself, and so make Himself a liar.  Nor does He give us mystical insights, or secret hermeneutical frameworks, by which we can reinterpret clear Old Testament texts to mean something other than what they obviously meant to the original audience, when interpreted grammatically and historically.
2. God revealed the Scriptures progressively, over around 1,500 years, through many human authors.  Yet they are a consistent whole.  Later revelation might give us a more full and clear understanding of old, but it never fundamentally changes the meaning of that older revelation.  So when the Spirit says “Israel” in 700 B.C., He still means “Israel” today.
3. True Christians should base all their doctrine not upon the traditions of men, but upon the clear and accurate exegesis of Scripture alone, because Scripture alone is the Word of the immutable, ever-true God.  If we want to know what God said, we must study His Word.
4. When we understand rightly what God has said, we must humbly submit to it and believe, even when what He has said refutes our cherished human traditions.  Though true Christians can and do disagree on secondary issues, they disagree biblically (that is, they are able to give biblical reason for why they believe what they believe, chapter and verse).

The idea that God would say something that He knows will be understood by His people a certain way for centuries, but secretly He knows that it really means something else, has horrific implications.  Not only is it an attack upon the clarity of Scripture, but it makes God a liar.  If God doesn’t really mean what He appears to mean, how can we trust anything in Scripture at all?  Who’s to say that future revelation might not fundamentally change the meaning of New Testament passages, in the same way as is now done so often with those in the Old Testament?  Who’s to say that when we read “the Church” in the New Testament, that God doesn’t secretly mean “the Muslims”?  It is unthinkable:  God never changes, and God cannot lie.

The Hermeneutics of Secret Knowledge

As we preach and teach, we are teaching our people how to interpret and understand God’s Word for themselves.  “The testimony of Yahweh is sure, making wise the simple” (Psalm 19:7).

 

Are we helping our people to see and rejoice in the clarity of God’s Word, or are we making it a book of riddles and enigmas, shrouded from their understanding?  Are we shining light, or cloaking them in darkness?  Are we helping them to grow in their ability to read and understand God’s Word for themselves, or are we making them dependent upon us, and our secret knowledge, without which they cannot hope to ever understand what the Bible really says?

 

This was one of the fundamental issues of the Reformation, and the tragedy of the Church in the UK today is that it is very often on the wrong side of this battle.  Jerod Gilcher puts it like this, word’s I’ve quoted before:

 

“Bad hermeneutics in our preaching makes the Bible inaccessible to the ploughboy…  Botched hermeneutics from the pulpit makes bad readers in the pew…  We train our people to read the Bible by the way that we preach…  Wrong hermeneutics in our preaching will diminish people’s confidence in the Bible, and eventually it will bring the church back into darkness the way it had been before the Reformation.”[1]

 

The “Heresy” of Premillennialism

 

When it comes to amillennialism (or postmillennialism for that matter), there are many very sound teachers whom I respect who hold to this position.  They work hard, in careful study.  They are prayerful men who rely upon the Spirit’s help.  They are in no way superficial in their teaching, and they have carefully thought through their position.  I recognize these men as brothers in Christ, and can learn from them.

 

However, none of this means that as a premillennialist I have to ignore where we differ on secondary issues like eschatology.  These are very important matters, and they should be discussed openly.  We cannot all be right, and there are very serious issues at stake.  But we can disagree humbly, as brothers, and listen to each other.  Above all we must gather together around Scripture, and see what the text of the Bible itself says.

 

Here in the UK, however, much of the visible church is captive to a superficial, but fiercely dogmatic, form of amillennialism.  To even be known as a premillennialist is often to invite secret contempt, or open hostility.  Indeed, it seems that premillennial eschatology is considered in many professing churches to be something divisive, dangerous, and even heretical.  That will seldom be said out loud, but it is certainly implied and acted upon behind the scenes.

 

We can discuss why this situation is as it is, but for now I simply say this:  The truth doesn’t depend on our traditions, opinions, politics, or anything else.  “The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:7-8).

 

As Christians who believe – or profess to believe – in the sufficiency and authority of Scripture, the only question that should matter to us is:  What has God said?  What did the human author and the Divine Author mean by the words they wrote?  There is not one apparent meaning of the human author, but then a different, secret meaning of the Divine Author.  There is one meaning, and this is what the text means.  Our doctrine should flow from sound, grammatical-historical exegesis of Scripture, which exposits that one meaning.

 

I don’t doubt that many who disagree with me on eschatology would agree with all I’ve just written.  The question we need to ask, though, is which of us can apply it consistently?

 

The Secret Premillennial Heritage of the Reformed Churches

 

The irony is that the traditional “Reformed” amillennial eschatology is not in fact truly Reformed, when we understand that term biblically.  Most “Reformed” churches hold to a traditional eschatology, not one exegeted from Scripture.  Exegesis is controlled by tradition, rather than the other way around.

 

And this becomes even more ironic when we look at the eschatology of many of the men who are considered to be pillars of the “Reformed tradition”.  This is kept quiet, and not discussed.  I only found out about it myself fairly recently.  But the fact is, as I have been encouraged to find out, many of these men held to the same eschatology as I am upholding here!  Horatius and Andrew Bonar; Robert Murray M’Cheyne; Charles Spurgen; J. C. Ryle.  The latter states:

 

“I believe that after our Lord Jesus Christ comes again, the earth shall be renewed, and the curse removed; the devil shall be bound, the godly shall be rewarded, the wicked shall be punished; and that before He comes there shall be neither resurrection, judgment, nor millennium, and that not till after He comes shall the earth be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord (Acts 3:21; Isa. 25:6-0; 1 Thess. 4: 14-18; Rev. 20: 1 etc)…  I believe that the Jews shall ultimately be gathered again as a separate nation, restored to their own land, and converted to the faith of Christ, after going through great tribulation (Jer. 30:10, 11; 31:10; Rom. 11:25, 26; Dan. 12:1; Zech. 13: 8, 9)…  I believe that the literal sense of the Old Testament prophecies has been far too much neglected by the Churches, and is far too much neglected at the present day, and that under the mistaken system of spiritualising and accommodating Bible language, Christians have too often completely missed its meaning (Luke 24: 25, 26).”[2]

 

Ryle in particular is interesting.  Why is it that his ecclesiology, as a bishop in the Church of England, is considered in “Reformed” circles okay to acknowledge, while his eschatology must so often, as it seems, be suppressed and denied?  What is it about premillennial eschatology that causes it to be a subject so hated and despised by so many professing Christians?  I ask again:  Can we not as Christians sit around Scripture, and discuss this matter openly as brothers?  Why the hostility and opposition to open discussion?  Ryle writes:

 

“I do not say that nobody can be saved who does not agree with me about prophecy. I am not infallible. I am very sensible that holier and better men than myself do not see these subjects with my eyes, and think me utterly mistaken. I condemn nobody; I judge nobody. I only ask liberty to hold and state distinctly my own views. The day will decide who is right. It is the new heart, and faith in Christ’s blood, which are absolutely necessary to salvation. The man who knows these two things experimentally may be wrong about prophecy, but he will not miss heaven.”[3]

 

If we claim to be heirs of his tradition, should we not listen to his wise counsel on this matter?

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[1] Jerod Gilcher, “Making the Bible Accessible for the Ploughboy”, Preach London (2026).  Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWlyYV2pBvk, accessed 20^th June 2026.

[2] J. C. Ryle, Are You Ready for the End of Time? Understanding Future Events from Prophetic Passages of the Bible (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2006), p.9.

[3] J. C. Ryle, Are You Ready for the End of Time? Understanding Future Events from Prophetic Passages of the Bible (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2006), pp.7-8.

Image: Andrew Barden, “Old Church Bibles” (2026).