David L. Turner, Professor of New Testament and Systematic Theology at Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary, has a revelation for you.  If you thought some day that you were going to the heavenly city detailed in Revelation Chapter 21, think again.

        In Chapter 9 of Dispensationalism, Israel and the Church, published by Zondervan, he relieves you of your hope.  He begins the discourse by praising a Reformed Theologian which turns out to be the key to his point of view.  David says that the description of that beautiful heavenly city is not literal in the sense you and I view it.  Instead, it is "imagery", "symbols", "visionary" and "simile".

        In plain words, all that stuff you believed about heaven is nonsense. Your problem is that because you believe chapter 21 to be a description of a literal city, you have "a wooden approach" to interpretation. Biblicist are, therefore, "hyperliteral".

        Not to worry though.  There is a city, says he, but it is on earth and it is literal (watch out when they use that word).  "Though it is an actual literal city, its glory will far surpass the language that John uses to portray it.  John's language is an attempt to describe what is in one sense indescribable".  It almost makes you feel sorry for God.  He seems to have done a very poor job of writing Revelation Chapter 21.  Of course, you could blame it on John "Recognizing that John's language does not literally correspond to the actual description of the holy city hardly lessens its glory."  After all it was just a vision.

        In case you did not recognize it.  This is the very same view Michael Van Horn got in hot water over.  However, he wrote a spurious apology and left the institution, not so with this author, he is still there and don't expect an apology.

        The view they hold is the same view held by those in the Northern Baptist Convention and it is one of the doctrinal reasons that Central Baptist Church walked away from that group.  It is a LIBERAL  mindset.   Turner expresses this in an incredible note.  "Perhaps the absence of oysters large enough to produce such pearls (a gate of the city) and the absence
of sufficient gold to pave such a city (viewed as literally 1,380 miles square and high) is viewed as sufficient reason not to take these images as fully literal".

        The concept is that when Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place" he did not mean "place" like heaven or the city described in Chapter 21.  Since the liberal mindset can make literal mean anything they wish they do indeed make "place" anything they want.  In fact, the author tells us that you do not have to wait for the new city.  Good news, "believers have already experienced the transforming vision of the new Jerusalem in the new heavens and earth" and "believers are already a colony of the new earth as they live on the present earth".  So, don't worry about some heavenly city, or heaven some where else and forget the gold, the pearls and whatever all that other detail may mean to those who believe the city is
literal, but really not really literal.

        The serious problem with these views about heaven and hell is not that people do not "hold" them sincerely, but that they are Biblically dishonest.  To use a word such a "literal" knowing full well what it means to those who hear it is "turnspeak".

        The root of this liberal mindset is Reformed Theology.  In the framework of eschatology they have ridiculed biblical dispensationalism.  It violates the important rule of interpretation that separates the Jew, Gentile and the Church.  If Israel as a nation and the church are ever put together, including their eternal inheritance the system is lost and nothing in the puzzle will fit.  Turners view and the institution that he represents is fouled with the errant reformed theology that thrives in
the world of grammatical cardinals.

        Even the elementary Bible student understands we are not talking here about Jews and gentiles as one in the church.  We are not talking about all righteous people at one in the sacrifice of Christ.  We fully understand the Bibles use of symbols and pictures, but that is not the problem.  The terrible error here is older than this church and we left
that error once before in 1935.  Even the cults teach an earthly eternal paradise.  Biblicist, however, have always believed in a NEW HEAVEN, a NEW EARTH and a NEW CITY.

        It all makes you wonder what these people think of Jonah and the great fish.   If they say it is "literal" you won't have the slightest idea what they are talking about.

Dr. Clay Nuttall
 

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