R.C. Sproul before the ‘Three Questions Letter’ Controversy

In January of 1993, the Covenant Eschatology Symposium was held in Mt. Dora, Florida. It was hosted by R.C. Sproul. I would like to thank Ed Stevens for providing materials about the Conference and for being a guest on an upcoming episode of American Vision’s podcast, which will be posted soon at AmericanVision.org. We also discussed David Chilton’s move to full preterism.

Those in attendance discussed the controversy surrounding full preterism, particularly Max King’s 1987 book The Cross and the Parousia of Christ: The Two Dimensions of One Age-Changing Eschaton. R.C. Sproul, Ken Gentry, James Jordan, Max and Tim King, Reggie Kidd, Robert Strimple, Roger Nicole, Chuck Hill, Dan McCartney, Jerry Crick, Greg Beale, and Richard Gaffin were in attendance. Papers were presented, followed by discussions over five days.

Prophecy Wars: The Biblical Battle Over the End Times

If you’re willing to take the Bible at its word, the study of prophecy can strengthen your faith, but if your trust is in man’s speculations, you will be disappointed every time. And that is why Bible prophecy is such a crucial area for apologetics. Skeptics of all stripes have condemned the Bible as inaccurate merely because various well-meaning Christians have been in error about the End Times.

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Gentry wrote a summary of the conference. You can read it here. Pay attention to Gentry’s comments about Dan McCartney’s presentation. McCartney’s view comes up in Sproul’s closing comments at the conference, “The Problem of Imminency,” below.

After presenting a survey of the various eschatological paradigms of Albert Schweitzer, Oscar Cullman, C.H. Dodd, Rudolf Bultmann, Herman Ridderbos, and others, R.C. shared where he was at that point in his study of the problem of imminency in eschatology. Some will argue that Sproul figured it out, and evidence for that is his 1998 book The Last Days According to Jesus. This may be true, although Andrew Sandlin criticized Sproul’s book in a review where he stated that Sproul conceded “a little too much ground to ‘consistent preterism’ (or rather, the Hymenaen heresy)…. Though Sproul does not at this point deny creedal Christianity, or come close to it, he leaves the reader with the distinct impression that he may be willing to do so if he were convinced that the Bible taught this.” Long before Sandlin’s attacks on me, he attacked R.C. Sproul for asking too many questions. Be that as it may, the following comments by Sproul are accurate and remain relevant today.

I’m not satisfied to say to you that I don’t know. I want to find out. Because the integrity of the message of Christ is at stake. The integrity of our understanding of the kingdom of God is at stake. And I don’t want to be guilty of twisting and bending and doing all these things. What Preterism has done for me so far is that it hasmade me see, to a much sharper degree than I ever did before, the significance of 70 AD, the cataclysmic significance to Israel of 70 AD, and to redemptive history (of 70 AD). And it has begun to give me significant, definite content for the “already.”

We live today as if we had been alive when Jesus was on earth; we should be so much more devout Christians than we are right now. I don’t think we really believe that we’re in a better redemptive historical situation today than they were. When Ridderbos showed me that in Amsterdam, I couldn’t go to sleep. I was walking around the room at 3 o’clock in the morning, saying that the ascension means that right now, right this minute, our Lord is reigning as the King of the universe. Yes, His kingdom is invisible, and yes, we have to make it visible, and we have to bear witness to it so that it becomes manifest. But the reality, which is an unperceived reality, is that He has gone to His coronation, He has gone to His investiture. And He is now the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. So, that in a very powerful way, the Kingdom of God is realized.

Now when I understood that much of the already, just as it was discoverable with the significance of theascension, I still was left with the rest of the odyssey of my life. And I’m still wrestling with the question. I can say some of it is already, and some of it is not yet, and dance with all this stuff, but sooner or later we haveto press the question: What is already, and what is not yet, and why? Why are we convinced that these things are not yet, and these things are already?

I know that one of the things that controls my thinking on this is one of the things we talked about this morning. Dan [McCartney] made a distinction between “a parousia” and “the Parousia.” We talked about proleptic[*] fulfillments of prophecy, which allow for levels of fulfillment. But I would ask questions like this: Is it possible that there is still to be born from a virgin? Is it still possible that in the next dimension of redemptive history a virgin will be with child and bring forth a child who will be called Immanuel? Is the second fulfillment of that in Jesus’ birth, as opposed to Isa. 7:14? Is that the end of the prolepsis? Or can we wait still for another? How do we know when the final fulfillment has come? How do we know that the coming that you say takes place in 70 AD—which you call “a coming”—how do we know that is not “thecoming”? If the prophecy of the Olivet Discourse is proleptic, we can’t know for sure. And we can’t know it is proleptic unless we can find other texts in the NT that clearly indicate that there will be “the Parousia.”

And that’s the challenge. Otherwise, we are just speculating. And I’ll close with these words. These are thekinds of things that drove Schweitzer nuts, and these other guys. Listen to verse 32 of Matthew 24. “Now learn this parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender, and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near…”

Now what’s the point of the parable here? You pay attention, so that you’re not going to be caught by surprise, so that you won’t miss something that’s capable of being missed. That you are to be vigilant here, lest you miss something. And He says, now look, “…so you also, when you see all these things, know that He is near,at the door. Assuredly I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.”

Do you realize how powerful that language is? Jesus doesn’t simply, in an ambiguous way, hint that the time is near for the fulfillment of these things. He gives a parable about seasons, about the time of ripening, and thenHe says that these things are near—and “near” is ambiguous? How near is near? I’ll tell you how near it is—“at the door.” It’s that close. Doesn’t it sound to you that our Lord is laboring something here? That He’s calling them to this vigilance because of the radical nearness of all of these things, of this coming of which He’s speaking? And then He says, “Be assured…” [Matt. 24:34]. Now, how much assurance can you have? Jesus gets done with His speech, and one of the disciples goes up to the other and says,

“Man, did you hear that? Some of us aren’t going to die until this comes to pass” [Matt. 16:28].

“Don’t read too much into that, you know. He may have a program here where this isn’t going to take place for 2,000 years.”

“Come on, did you hear what He said? He said it’s near, it’s at the door, I want you to be alert…”

Is it even remotely conceivable that a disciple who heard this statement from Jesus would have even allowed for the possibility that what He was talking about would take place 2,000 years later? I think we’re straining at the gnat and swallowing a camel here. Now, don’t get me wrong, I haven’t landed. But I will never be satisfied with anything less than a full explanation of this, that takes seriously both sides of it—the coming as well asthe destruction of Jerusalem. We know the destruction of Jerusalem takes place. I know Bill Lane [in his commentary on Mark] labored with the phrase panta tauta [“all these things”]. And he tried to divide it up structurally and say that panta tauta refers to all the references to Jerusalem, and everything else refers to the coming of Christ. It’s a nice little theory, but in my judgment, it is contrived. It’s artificial.

What I’m really ending with is a plea that we’ll do more of this—just keep pushing and pushing and pushing until we can handle these objections. Because the time is here, it’s coming and now is, brothers, that theskeptical criticism of the Bible has become almost universal in the world. And people have attacked the credibility of Jesus. Maybe some church fathers made a mistake. Maybe our favorite theologians have made mistakes. I can abide with that. I can’t abide with Jesus being a false prophet, because if I am to understand that Jesus is a false prophet, my faith is in vain.”

[*] Proleptic refers to a concept in eschatology where future events are anticipated or realized in the present. This term is often used to describe how certain eschatological promises or realities are believed to be experienced by believers before their ultimate fulfillment.

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