Originally published in "The Lord's Coming Herald & Wesleyan Bible Prophecy Advocate," Spring Edition 2003
John Wesley On The So-Called Jewish Millennial Kingdom Theory
It is commonly believed among many
professed holiness folks today that Jesus is coming back to set up his Jewish
millennial kingdom.
While what exactly is to be the nature, meaning, and purpose
of this future dispensation is unclear, all who hold it seem to agree that this
coming last post-Christian millennial kingdom era is, of necessity, supposed to
be a fuller manifestation of the divine revelation-something more and beyond the
potential of the "church age" dispensation, as we know it now.
While John Wesley lived before the time of Edward Irving,
John Nelson Darby, and the full-flowering of our modern popular dispensational
pre-millennial end-time Bible prophecy teaching, he certainly left on record for
us the strongest condemnation of the subsequent ideological heresy that these
latter would espouse. Here is what he said:
"Christianity, as it includes the whole moral law of God
both by way of injunction and of promise, if we will hear him is designed of God
to be the last of all his dispensations. There is no other to come after this.
This is to endure to the consummation of all things. Of consequence, all such
new revelations are of Satan, and not of God: and all pretenses to another more
perfect dispensation fall to the ground" (Works, Vol. 5, p.
314).
Did I hear right?
Anyone touting "another, more perfect dispensation " is
deriving that opinion ... "of Satan"?
"Of Satan!" Harsh words indeed then flowing from the mind and
pen of the apostle of the love-filled heart!
Friends, these were Wesley's raw statements of conviction,
and nothing he ever said or wrote has ever been made any more clear!
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