Review: Heaven Misplaced

In the words of that great theologian Roy Wood, “I wish it could be Christmas every day.”

Douglas Wilson describes Heaven Misplaced: Christ’s Kingdom on Earth, due to be released on December 16th, as “a small effort to get Christians to believe their Christmas carols year-round”, which is to say, to take seriously declarations like “He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found.” His thesis is that,

“the gospel will continue to grow and flourish throughout the world, more and more individuals will be converted, the nations will stream to Christ, and the Great Commission will finally be successfully completed. The earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. When that happens, generation after generation will love and serve the Lord faithfully. And then the end will come.”

I have had the privilege of listening to Pastor Wilson arguing in favour of postmillennialism, here in England at The Blenheim Lectures earlier in the year, and also via the interweb, in his Ascension Day sermon. Here, he draws together the strands of what he describes as ‘historical optimism’ in a highly accessible introduction. In this book, eschatological terminology is relegated to an appendix for the interested reader who wants to read more, and technical vocabulary in general is kept to a minimum, and what little there is is explained in brief footnotes. This, then, is a primer on postmillennialism – and more - for everyone from the newest Christian upwards.

While the eschatological landscape amongst conservative evangelicals here in England, in my experience at least, tends to be amillennial rather than (dispensational) pre-millennial, in contrast to the United States, we nevertheless share the gloomy expectation that this world is going to go from bad to worse before resurrection morning: this world is a kind of Vietnam out of which we need to be airlifted. Wilson recognises that he’s up against a challenge and asks his readers to suspend their disbelief as they read this book, as they would with, for example, The Lord of the Rings, and temporarily enter into the story of the future of the world he is telling. He describes what he is doing, not so much as systematic theology, but ‘lyrical theology’: his aim is to show how lovely postmillennialism is. Does that mean, therefore, that there is no robust, Biblical basis for what Wilson is advocating? By no means. Throughout this book, Wilson expounds key Old Testament promises in light of the way Christ and the Apostles used them, and deals with common objections, to show that postmillennialism is strongly grounded in the Scriptures. As Wilson concludes, “How wonderful it would all be if all this could be true. The best part of the story is, it is.”

Wilson’s vision is profoundly Christ-centred: Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension shape his optimism. In a similar vein to the Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright, Wilson offers a corrective to the widespread view of Christ’s resurrection that it means we get to go to heaven when we die, but history remains largely unchanged, and which is yet another product of our individualism: Christ’s resurrection is at the heart of history and is the firstfruits of our resurrection and the new creation itself. It is not the case that we live in a two-storey universe, where we live out our earthly lives down below and then spend eternity upstairs. Yes, when we die, we do go to heaven to be with the Lord, but at the second coming, Christ will return to the earth and transform it. In support of this, Wilson provides a helpful exegesis of Philippians 3.20-21: just as Philippi is a colony of Rome and the point of a colony isn’t that the people living there eventually get to go to the capital city, but that the colony is itself meant to be a centre for the expansion of the influence of the capital, so too the church is a colony of heaven, and while we get to visit the capital city, heaven, what we are waiting for is Christ’s arrival from the capital city to the colony, to transform it. Wilson rightly insists that the new creation is a complete transformation, but it is a transformation of this world, just as Christ rose again with the same (but glorified) body with which he died, and just as we will, like a seed growing into wheat. The ground of the hope Wilson expounds is the cross of Christ. He reminds that Christ came into the world not to condemn the world, but to save the world. Moreover, the cross, like the resurrection, has public ramifications, particularly for the powers of this world, for the crucifixion was a public event. Wilson argues from 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 that it topples the princes of this world and everything under their jurisdiction – the arts, sciences, politics and so on – so ‘preaching Christ and him crucified is as broad as the world’. Wilson wants us to have a full-orbed view of the atonement  – penal substitution, Christus Victor, Christ as example – which reflects Christ in all his offices, prophet, priest and king. Christ’s public death and resurrection have massive implications for justice: he is coming back to judge in righteousness, delivering those accused and victimised by the world as the falsely accused victim who has been raised from the dead. As the ascended Lord, Jesus Christ has been formally invested with all authority in heaven and on earth, before everyone must bow, human rulers and judges, all organisations and countries. Moreover, Christ’s kingship is what we are to proclaim. The Great Commission doesn’t give Jesus authority, it declares the authority he already has and summons people to repend and believe in him. Christ reigns until all his enemies are subdued and the last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15.25-26). Only once all opposition has ended will death be destroyed, and then the end will come. Jesus is the example we are to follow, and Jesus teaches us that by going to the back of the line as he does, we get to go to the head of the line – the chief seats – and so we are not to be so holy as to refuse the promotion when it comes, nor are we to strive directly for those highest positions.

Wilson describes for us the shape that Christ’s kingdom takes – it starts small and gradually fills the whole earth (Matthew 13.31-32, Daniel 2.44-45. In answer to the objection that the Bible says the way of salvation is narrow, an objection I myself have heard on a number of occasions, Wilson points us to Luke 13.22-30 and its context, in which the narrow gate refers to the salvation of the Jews in the first century, followed by the streaming in of the Gentiles. Christ makes a similar point about the salvation of a small remnant of Jews and of a large number of Gentiles elsewhere – Matthew 21.43 and Matthew 8.11, for example. Moreover, it is the salvation of the ends of the earth that was on Christ’s mind as he died: he quotes Psalm 22, the Psalm which in the first half is a prayer to God in the face of derision and suffering for deliverance, and in the second is a cry of faith that he will be delivered, and as a result, the ends of the earth will turn to the Lord. Wilson also offers us a helpful reminder abut what is happening on the cross. In fathoming out the mechanics of the atonement, we often hear accounts of the cross which describe how the Trinity was somehow ruptured at the cross. This is problematic to say the least. As Wilson points out, Christ being forsaken by the Father ‘is not to say that the Trinity unraveled [sic], but rather that the unbroken fellowship between God and his incarnate Son was disrupted.’ Through the cross, Christ has conquered the world.

Pastor Wilson exhibits no exegetical trickery in establishing his position. I was at the Proclamation Trust’s Cornhill Summer School three years ago, where Christopher Ash told us when we look at Old Testament passages, we interpret them in the light of the way the apostles understood them, and where a New Testament passages quotes or alludes to an Old Testament passage, we should take into account the Old Testament context. On this basis, Wilson reminds us that the Old Testament promises don’t merely await future fulfilment, but that they began to be fulfilled with the coming of Christ. On the basis of Psalm 2, we know that following Christ’s resurrection, the Father invited him to ask for them and he owns all the nations now, as the Great Commission testifies. Moreover, the implication of the concluding appeal of Psalm 2 is for the world’s political rulers to become Christians. The way the New Testament uses Psalm 110 proclaims Christ’s present princely rule. In addition, the radical peace and worldwide knowledge of the Lord as the nations stream to Christ in the gospel age is established by the way Paul applies Isaiah 11.9-10. Indeed, this is one example of what was particularly thrilling for me when reading through this book: the logic of Wilson’s unfolding argument mirrored time and again the discoveries I made myself in my own reading of Scripture. This was also the case with the gradual increase of Christ’s government and of peace in this world from the time when he was born (Isaiah 9). Wilson also deals with issues arising from New Testament apocalyptic, in the gospels and in Revelation, making a convincing case for preterism, i.e. that a straightforward literal reading of Matthew 24 describes the events of AD 70 and a right understanding of the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven – it is about the authority with which he is invested at his ascension and subsequently exercises. Language about the sun beng darkened, the moon not giving its light, stars falling from heaven, refers to God’s judgement on nations and cities, like Babylon and Edom (Isaiah 13.10, 34.4). The point in Matthew 24 and its parallels is that Jerusalem, too, will be judged for its sin. Wilson also makes a good case for an early dating of Revelation, following clearly events in the Roman Empire, with Nero as the beast, and Jerusalem the whore of Babylon.

As Pastor Wilson concludes his book, he issues a rallying call to the church. In light of the cultural mandate of the opening chapters of Genesis, and its reiteration after the Fall and its restoration in Christ, we are not to shirk our responsibility to exercise dominion in this world or abuse it to lord it over this world, but to exercise godly dominion in Christ. To this end, we need to divest ourselves of the ghetto mentality which believes that the secular state is unconquerable and that we must escape from our responsibilities and be saved from this world, but also of the mentality that wants Christ to be a player at the table of ’secular democracy’. Wilson invites a high view of the church indeed: the new humanity God is creating in Christ, the future of the human race, in which the image of God is being restored. She is a mother, the mother of cities, cities which are planted where the word and sacraments are ministered. He therefore summons us to faith in God’s promises in Scripture (for faith is required for a right understanding of Scripture) for ourselves.

Concerns I have heard raised about postmillennialism is that it is a theology of glory, or that it encourages the view that humanity can gradually make progress towards a better world under its own steam, or that it fails to give due attention to this world corrupted by sin, or even that it is universalism. Those charges simply will not stick to the position Pastor Wilson is advocating. He is gospel-centred throughout. The ground for the glorious vision he describes is the cross of Christ, and it is brought about through the preaching of the word. It is clear Wilson thinks that the kingdom will advance through opposition: “The victory of this kingdom is still watered by the blood of the martyrs, figuratively and literally: the way of the cross is still the only way to enduring glory.” indeed he encourages us to reflect whether the relative lack of opposition we are facing at the moment is a result of compromise:

   “If God grants a genuine reformation, it will be one like that which was granted in the sixteenth century, and the most obvious common feature it will share with that earlier reformation will be that it challenges the rulers of this age. No greaster indictment of the contemporary church than this can be found: the secular state is operating on all cylinders, and yet for the most part, the Christian pulpit remains a safe place to be.
   “More pastors ought to wonder about this. Shouldn’t ministers and churches be more concerned than they are about the lack of opposition they are facing? And shouldn’t they be willing to consider if it isn’t the result of diluting the message. It is possible to talk about the final judgment and the lordship of Jesus Christ in such a way that makes it clear that He is only lord over those areas that secularists are frankly happy to let Him have – the afterlife for example. Who cares if Jesus is Lord in ways that never make any difference at all?”

And Wilson is no universalist:

“This must not be taken to mean that every last human being who ever lived will finally be saved. Our Lord’s teaching on the terrible nature of everlasting fire excludes that option. So the fact that Christ will save the world does not mean that He will save every last individual who ever lived in it… Every Bible believer must reject the universalism that denies the awful reality of the final judgment for unbelievers.”

This book, then, is a robust, Scripturally-rooted exposition of the Christian hope that takes into account God’s promises in the Bible and the very public ramifications of Christ’s public death and resurrection. This is a hope which gives great confidence for the future of this world before the Lord Jesus returns, and after, and which will be realised, unlike the kingdoms of this world by humble faith, walking the way of Christ, trusting his promises and preaching his gospel. This is challenging reading, which should cause evangelicals to reconsider assumptions with which we have grown up in the light of Scripture, but with this book, Pastor Wilson lights a lamp which dispels much of our current eschatological gloom and galvanises the church to work in the power of the Spirit to see Christ’s present reign over all things acknowledged in this world, throughout this world. He succeeds in describing with clarity and vigour a vision which is altogether lovely.