Kerry Clinite wrote, “It has been argued that Isaiah 41:4 and Isaiah 46:10 speak to and end of human history or history general which includes this present earth, and yet between these two chapters is Isaiah 45:12, and Isaiah 45:17-18. It is clear in these passages that God created this earth to be inhabited with no end mentioned, and that the everlasting salvation preached upon the earth has no end. This is confirmed by the Lord by one more passage in that chapter, Isaiah 45:23 in which it is clearly related to Rom 14:11 and Phili 2:10 and to Jesus Christ and His Gospel.”
Full preterism, as defined by Kerry, makes these passages meaningless and impossible to fulfill. Let me explain. But first, let me quote:
Phil 2: Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Ro 14: For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.
Is 45: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.’
One thing that needs to be pointed out is that notice that Kerry does not limit any of this to “Israel” or the “physical seed of Abraham”, as some full prets do. In fact, he provides two other quotes from Isaiah, suggesting that all of this language is “global”:
Is 45:12 I made the earth and created man on it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host.
17-18 But Israel is saved by the Lord with everlasting salvation; you shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity. For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!): “I am the Lord, and there is no other.
It is nice to see that Kerry understands the “global” perspective going on here. However, i am not sure why he makes it a point to say that “God created this earth to be inhabited with no end mentioned”, as if Sam or myself denied this. We don’t. Saying that “history as we currently experience it will end” is not the same thing as saying that “the earth will become uninhabited one day and remain that way forever.” In fact, in my trip to Belize, i gave a two hour overview of GK Beale’s book The Temple and the Church’s Mission, in which he appeals to this very chapter in Isaiah (45) to explain how the temple-expansion mandate, if you will, relates to the cosmos as a whole. Beale is a “futurist”, as full prets like to call it, and he doesn’t have an “end” to an “inhabited earth”. I am just simply baffled as to why full preterists continually bring this up in responding to “futurists.” True, you might find some hyper dispy that believes that God is going to completely obliterate planet earth; but i personally know of no one who believes that. In most cases, it is simply a tired, worn-out straw man.
Further, notice what Isaiah didn’t say. He didn’t say that the earth will remain inhabited in the same condition we find it in today. Somehow, Kerry took the words “everlasting salvation” and turned them into “everlasting proclamation of the Gospel to an infinite number of sinners.” That is not even close to what Isaiah said. Isaiah merely said that this “salvation” we have is “eternal”. Eternal life. We will NEVER be put to shame. NEVER condemned. That’s it. Anything more than that is complete eisegesis. Full preterists, for whatever reason, only see two options when it comes to “world without end” language. Either the world will go on forever in its current state (infinite procreation) or the prophets lied. Again, for whatever reason, it never dawns on them that there is a third option; a third option that MUST be the case in light of the “perfection” and “maturity” language spoken of in many texts, of which full preterism either ignores or ‘gnosticizes.’
But back to the “all” and “every” stuff. If full preterism is true, we encounter a huge problem in regard to Isaiah 45.23. Notice what Paul says: “we will ALL stand before the judgment seat of God…”
Question: How can this passage ever be fulfilled if the “all” is defined as an infinite number of people? It CAN’T! Yes, this is the same ole’, boring “problem of infinity” again, but it is still a problem for the full preterists nonetheless. A problem their system creates.
I find it ironic that a system that prides itself in “fulfillment” actually makes certain Scriptures impossible to fulfill! Think about it…if we were to ask God right now, “Lord, have all stood before you for judgment?”, the Lord would reply, “No, not all. There are more to come.” Ok, simple enough, right? But if Kerry is correct, there will NEVER be a time in which the Lord replies, “Yes, ALL people have stood before me for judgment.” This can NEVER happen, because according to Kerry, at any given point in time, there will always be one more…no…an INFINITE amount more, to be born and stand before the Lord. Thus, the answer will ALWAYS be “No, not all. There are more to come.” Fulfillment is not even possible in this scenario.
And all of this is unnecessary. ‘Infinite procreation’ isn’t exegeted from these texts. It is a by-product of full preterism that is forced upon these texts, with full preterism itself looking more and more like an over-reaction to earth-obliteration thinking.
If you came to this article directly, you may have missed the picture i used for this post. If so, see below. It is a picture of Euler’s Circles. In logic, “All A is B” is illustrated with circles and circles are…well…closed. You don’t draw circles with infinite diameters. The solution to this full-pret paradox is quite simple. Think about it…
