Hello Samuel,
When you speak of idealism as an eschatological view, there are some pitfalls that must be acknowledged and avoided. There is “pure” idealism as distinct from “modified” idealism, which latter is contemporary Amillennialism. Two lengthy threads on this distinction
here, and
here. I was new to this view, and it took some time to comprehend it. Truly, being here on PuritanBoard has been an educational experience over the years!
Because I maintain there are actual historical referents in Revelation – apart from the 7 letters to the historical churches in Rev 2 and 3 – I have been called an historicist. And I can see a "pure" idealist saying that! Yet this is exactly why idealism has been so maligned, being identified with an errant form of idealism.
It is accepted among contemporary Amils that the “eclectic” or “modified idealist” view (Beale)[1] allows
some departure from the idealist, though as to where the line is drawn there is no clear consensus. Beale himself says, “...certainly there are prophecies of the future in Revelation. The crucial yet problematic task of the interpreter is to identify through careful exegesis and against the historical background those texts which pertain respectively to past present and future.” [2]
[1] G.K. Beale,
New International Greek Testament Commentary: Revelation (Eerdmans 1999), pp 48, 49.
[2] Ibid., p 49.
I readily concede that the criticism against even contemporary Amillennialism has some basis, due to the inability or reluctance of its most scholarly proponents to actually
name an historical event in Revelation apart from the return of Christ and the 7 letters. I have briefly addressed that in the essay posted here,
UNCOVERING PROPHETIC DETAILS IN REVELATION: Restoring confidence in the applicability of John’s Apocalypse, the final prophecy. In the main, however, the hermeneutic approach of the Amillennial "modified" idealist school is thoroughly sound.
Basically my view is this: the
pharmakeia [sorceries] of Revelation 18:23 and 9:21 (a variant in the latter reading
pharmakon – drugs – does not affect translation) are the very drugs used and heralded by the sixties and seventies counterculture that were exported into most of the world and which – in retrospect – are seen to constitute a prophesied event clearly depicted in Scripture. The emergence of
sorcery in recent times has major eschatological implications.
Geerhardus Vos, although speaking of discerning the Antichrist, enunciated
a hermeneutic principle applicable here,
“[It] belongs among the many prophecies, whose best and final exegete will be the eschatological fulfillment, and in regard to which it behooves the saints to exercise a peculiar kind of eschatological patience.” (The Pauline Eschatology, p. 133)
O.T. Allis in his book,
Prophecy and the Church, expressed the same sentiment:
“The usual view on this subject [‘the intelligibility of prophecy’] has been that prophecy is not intended to be fully understood before its fulfilment, that it is only when God ‘establishes the word of his servants and fulfills the counsel of his messengers,’ that the meaning and import of their words become fully manifest.” (p 25)
Stuart Olyott in his,
Dare to Stand Alone: Daniel Simply Explained, thinks likewise:
“We must realize that some of the Bible’s teachings relating to the very last days will not be understood until we are in those days. That is why it is both unwise and dangerous to draw up detailed timetables of future events. Some parts of the Word of God will not become obvious in their meaning until the days of which they speak have dawned.” (p 166)
[These three men are all of the Amillennial school of eschatological interpretation.] The reason this has not been widely recognized is that those who live godly have no notion what the dark practice of sorcery entails, a practice that astonishingly became a national and even global
recreation of sorts.
Although it may fascinate some, Historicism is not even a consideration among the better modern eschatological commentators. Its coin among some is that it was considered good by a number of Reformation divines, but its day is long gone. Their eschatology, being far from the
final manifestations of Babylon and the Beast she rides, was premature. It has rightly been said that Historicism's failure to clearly show the fulfillment of Revelation in the ongoing circumstances of history up through the years
has doomed it to continual revision as time passed and thus to a deserved obscurity.
