William Addison Alexander on premillennialism and systematic theology

[Reformed Covenanter]

The relation of events, causal and successive, in the pre-millenarian eschatology, while a favourite with many, and to some minds a very fascinating one, is not that usually held among Protestant Christians. It is not the prevalent view among Presbyterians. It is not the view taught in the Catechisms or in the Confession of Faith of our church. On the other hand it is there expressly disavowed. Standard writers on systematic theology, who necessarily take the comprehensive view of God’s gracious plan, almost to a man discard this order as one which cannot be made, in its varied elements, to square with itself or with the most definite teachings of Scripture.

It assumes that the second advent will usher in the millennium, when our Lord will reign on the throne of Israel in Jerusalem as did King David. It foresees a brilliant reign whose splendours are to be sensuous and Jewish. It avoids those passages of Scripture which connect immediately the coming of Christ and the final judgment of all the world, and which affirms that this coming is a coming to judge. It holds to a separate resurrection of the righteous and the wicked, one at either end of the millennium, a doctrine that rests on one verse in the midst of a mysterious and symbolical passage, and on a construction of that verse that is not only not necessary but is in the highest degree improbable; since, in addition to being out of analogy with the rest of Scripture, it assumes without proof that the resurrection of the souls there spoken of is a resurrection of the body, and further, that it is a resurrection of all the righteous dead; a meaning not only not in the passage but expressly precluded by the fact that it is of certain martyrs who had been beheaded for the witness of Jesus that the evangelist in writing. ...

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William Addison Alexander on premillennialism and systematic theology

The relation of events, causal and successive, in the pre-millenarian eschatology, while a favourite with many, and to some minds a very fascinating one, is not that usually held among Protestant C…

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[BRK]

It foresees a brilliant reign whose splendours are to be sensuous and Jewish.

I recall the walls of dispensational premillenialism falling down as I read through the New Testament several years ago. Before the Lord used the Reformed tradition to point me toward a more biblical theology, I was taught that Christ would return and reign in Jerusalem and would receive offerings and other Levitical sacrifices in fulfillment of his promises to ethnic Israel. Although these were understood to be memorial, this view now seems sacrilegious in light of the whole teaching of Scripture and its typology.

Hebrews 10:8-10 (ESV)

8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. ​

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Christ is the substance of the old covenant and has made obsolete in himself the proceedings thereof. To return to them again in any way is to deny the sufficiency of his work in fulfilling the whole of the law on our behalf.