Written by Barry Waugh, William S. Plumer |
Wednesday, January 3, 2024
From the day that Christ was born to this hour, all the desirable changes which have taken place in the world, either in persons or communities, have been in consequence of his incarnation and of his glorious progress in setting up his kingdom. So, shall it ever be. His kingdom is constantly enlarging. His diadem is more and more glorious. Every soul saved is a new jewel in his crown.

The following text is a transcription of the chapter, “The Incarnation of Christ,” from The Rock of Our Salvation: A Treatise Respecting the Natures, Person, Offices, Work, Sufferings, and Glory of Jesus Christ, written by William Swan Plumer and published by the American Tract Society in 1867. Dr. Plumer was a profuse writer and many of his works have gone unused, which is particularly a shame because his writing tends to clarity and simplicity due to his keen pastoral sense honed in congregations in Richmond, Baltimore, and other locations. In the transcription some information in brackets [ ] including thoughts on clarification; one paragraph in particular needed some enumeration of points. Brackets also are used for inserted source citations and Bible references.
The last paragraph of Plumer’s chapter comments regarding the practice of remembering Jesus’ birth annually; the post for December 21, 2019, “Incarnation, Archibald Alexander,” presented Dr. Alexander’s sermon, circa 1850, that concludes with thoughts on the same subject. You may want to read on this site the brief biographical post about William S. Plumer. Plumer quotes Jonathan Edwards, John Dick, Basil the Great, William Nevins, and Robert Hall. The chapter ends with Plumer saying, “It is, however, a significant fact, that God has concealed from us any positive knowledge of the day, the month, and even the year of our Savior’s birth.” The review by B. B. Warfield of a book about the history of Christmas also discusses the unknown date of Christ’s birth.
The header is from, The New Testament of our Lord Iesus Christ: translated out of Greeke by Theod. Beza ; with brief summaries and expositions upon the hard places by the said authour, Ioac. Camer., and P. Lofeler Villerius ; Englished by L. Tomson ; with annotations of Fr. Iunius upon Revelation, 1599, as on Internet Archive. I do not think I have ever seen “translated by” rendered as “Englished.” The portrait of Plumer is a copy given to me several years ago by Dr. C. N. Willborn, pastor of Covenant PCA in Oakridge and professor in Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, South Carolina.
Barry Waugh
The Incarnation of Christ
by William S. Plumer
When we say, the Son of God became incarnate, we mean to say that he became the Son of man, taking to himself human nature entire. In the Apostles’ Creed this doctrine is expressed: “He was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary.” The Athanasian Creed says: “He is not only perfect God, but perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.” The Westminster Assembly teaches:
The Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fulness of time was come, take upon him man’s nature, with all the essential properties and infirmities thereof, yet without sin; being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator between God and man. [Westminster Confession, 8:2]
Respecting Christ’s human nature, many wild and dangerous opinions have been held; but these need not now be formally refuted. The proof of the true doctrine will be sufficient.
The union of Christ’s natures was formed, not by his humanity seeking to be affianced to divinity. This would have been presumptuous aspiring. But his Godhead sought union with manhood. This was infinite love and condescension. Christ’s human nature never existed separately, or otherwise than in union with his divinity. From his conception this union was complete. The pre-existent divine nature took to itself human nature. Christ’s human nature never had a personal subsistence by itself. So that Christ did not assume a human person, but human nature, “His person is not a compound person; the personality belongs to his Godhead, and the human nature subsists in it by a peculiar dispensation. The assumption of our nature made no change in his person; it added nothing to it; and the only difference is, that the same person who was possessed of divinity has now taken humanity” [John Dick, Lectures, v. 2, p. 20]. So that things done or suffered in either nature are ascribed to the one person, Christ Jesus. The properties of each nature are, and will ever continue to be, entire and distinct. Divinity cannot be subject to any change. Humanity cannot cease to be humanity, it cannot become divinity. The Creator cannot cease to be Creator. The creature cannot cease to be a creature.
This union of the two natures in Christ is not without some similitude in ourselves. In his constitution man has two substances, one a soul, the other a body; one spiritual and immortal, the other material and perishable. By their union, one of these substances is not changed into the other. They remain distinct even when united. Yet a man is one person, and not two persons. When we say, someone is sad, all know we refer to his soul. When we say, someone is muscular, all know we speak of his body. Yet in both cases we speak of the same person. So, Christ’s person is one, and not two. When he spake of himself he said, I, mine, me. When his apostles spake of him, they said, he, his, him. When we address him, we say, thou, thine, thee, Acts 1:24. The  Scriptures also use singular nouns respecting him, and call him a Prophet, a Priest, a King, a Shepherd, a Redeemer. The union of his natures could not be more perfect. It is personal, perpetual, indissoluble.
The Scriptures say, Christ was made of a woman. Human beings have come into the world in four ways. [1] The first man, Adam, the very fountain of human nature, had neither father nor mother. Neither man nor woman was the instrument of his existence. [2] The first woman, Eve, had neither father nor mother, yet she derived her nature from Adam, but in no sense from a woman. [3] Since the first pair, every mere man has had both father and mother. Yet none have denied that all these had human nature entire. [4] Jesus Christ had a mother, but no father according to the flesh, even as in his divine nature he had a Father only. He was made of a woman.
To be our Savior, it behooved Christ to have a human nature. His incarnation was fitting and necessary.
It was meet that the nature which had brought our ruin should bring our deliverance.
It was fit that the nature which had sinned should make reparation for our wrongs, and so should die.
This earth, which is the abode of men, not of God nor of angels, was the proper theater for the display of the grace, and mercy, and justice, and power, manifested in the life and death of Jesus Christ. He that was rich thus became poor that we, through his poverty, might be rich, 2 Cor. 8:9. In some respects, this was the most amazing step in our Lord’s humiliation. It is more surprising that a prince should marry a shepherdess than that, having made her queen, he should nobly protect and richly endow her, or even die in her defense.
Christ was made under the law. As to his divine nature, he could in no sense be under the law. He was the Lawgiver. He was God; God cannot live and act under rules fit for the government of creatures. If the Savior was to live under the law as a rule of life, and set us an example in all things, he must do it in a finite nature, and as his mission was to us, most fitly in our nature.
Besides, Divinity cannot suffer, cannot die. But by his incarnation, Jesus was made “lower than the angels, for the suffering of death,” [Heb. 2:9].
Thus, he was made under the law in the two senses of being voluntarily subject to its precept, being thus bound to fulfil all righteousness; and being voluntarily made under the penalty of the law, that he might taste of death for every man. He even obeyed the law of religious rites under which he lived. In his infancy he was circumcised. In his manhood he was baptized. He perfectly, personally, perpetually kept the whole moral law. He never sinned once, even by omission. And he freely placed himself, and lived and died, under the curse of the very law which he perfectly obeyed during his whole life. Edwards says: “The meritoriousness of Christ’s obedience depends on the perfection of it. If it had failed in any instance, it could not have been meritorious; for imperfect obedience is not accepted as any obedience at all in the sight of the law of works, to which Christ was subject. That is not accepted as obedience to a law that does not fully answer it.” [Works of President Edwards, v. 1, reprint of Worcester ed., 1844, 406]. The efficacy of Christ’s death depended on his dying in the room and stead of sinners, who were under the curse of the law. If he did not bear the curse for us, we shall surely be obliged to bear it ourselves.
Let us consider a few distinct propositions.

Prophecy required that Christ should assume human nature. It said he should be of “the seed of Abraham” and of “the seed of David,” Gen. 12:3,7; 17:7,8; Gal. 3:16; 2 Sam. 7:12; John 7:42; Acts 13:23; Rom. 1:3; 2 Tim. 2:8. Other predictions required that he should “at the latter day stand upon the earth,” Job 19:25; that he should have a body, Psa. 40:6 and Heb. 10:5; that he should hang upon his mother’s breasts, Psa. 22:9; and that his body should be dead, Isa. 26:19.

Yet still more clearly, the very first gospel ever preached, even in Eden, foretold that he should have a human nature, and that derived from his mother: “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head,” Gen. 3 :15; and later: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel,” Isa. 7:14. So that the Scriptures would not have been fulfilled, if Christ had not had a human nature—a human nature derived from his mother alone. In prophetic vision, Daniel called him the Son of man, Dan. 7:13, 14.

These predictions have been fulfilled. The whole history of our Lord upon earth proves it. God has “sent forth his Son, made of a woman,” [Gal. 4:4]. In the New Testament he is often called a man. In the gospels alone he is more than seventy times called the Son of man. More than sixty times he gives this appellation to himself. The year of his ascension, Stephen saw him glorified and called him the Son of man. Sixty years later John did the same. The gospel of Matthew is styled “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” John says: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” John 1:14. Paul says: “He took upon him the seed of Abraham,” Heb. 2:16. In his first epistle, 1:1-3, John expressly says that by three senses, hearing, sight, and touch, he and the other apostles had satisfied themselves of his incarnation.

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Premillennialism, by placing the inauguration of Christ’s Kingdom in the future, encourages the Church to keep circling the runway in a perpetual holding pattern until Jesus returns. This has led to all kinds of ecclesial passivity where the Church’s mission is not something we do today but rather an appeal for divine intervention. It is like a child waiting for the parent to clean the room for them. Jesus did not commission us to such a petulant posture.

Introduction
Hello everyone, and welcome back to our new series called A Practical Postmillennialism, where we are talking about the end-times doctrine called postmillennialism. We will define that term and see a Biblical case for that doctrine in the weeks ahead. Still, in these early episodes of this series, we need to look at the other eschatological views and show how they are not only deficient but actually contribute to a defeatist mindset that has hampered the Church in the modern world, caused her to retreat from culture, expecting an imminent return of Christ who will come and rescue a bruised and beaten up church. This inglorious view has done much to harm the bride of Christ and immobilize her for mission. So before we get to the Biblical view of the end-times and the good news that postmillennialism puts forward, we have to wade through the dirty waters of eschatological defeatism, identifying it for what it is, and flushing it back to where it belongs. 
In our first blog, called Defeating Defeatism, we tackled the most egregious of the end-times perspectives, a relative newcomer among the positions on eschatology, which is called Dispensationalism. There, it was shown how Dispensationalism is a theological system of fragmentation, slicing the Bible up into seven arbitrary and totally made-up epochs, which have little to nothing to do with each other. Like ripping a chapter out of seven different books, combining them together, and trying to create a cohesive story, Dispensationalism produces only incoherence and (as a viewpoint) inspires no one to do anything. This does not mean all Dispensationalists are lazy couch potatoes who are merely eeking their way through life. But, it does mean that whenever dispensationalists do any Kingdom work, evangelizing and making disciples, building and planting churches, they are not operating consistently within their own frame of reference. If the sky is always falling, there is no time to build. Which means whenever they do build, they are betraying their own view. 
Furthermore, by destroying the unity of Scripture, assigning the Church to an arbitrary era that is doomed to fail, and by punting all of the promises of Jesus’ Kingdom to an indeterminate epoch we will never see in the future, proponents of this view naturally withdraw from culture, because frankly, what’s the point? We will never win; we will only lose, and our only hope is to be slingshotted out of here in an unbiblical rapture. The consequences of this action are devastating. While they have removed themselves from culture, society has supremely decayed, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy for the prophecy pundits. Instead of seeing the clear and obvious truth that society has worsened because the Church has failed to engage it (as the salt and light as Jesus commanded), dispensationalists continue to avoid culture. It continues to worsen because of that, and their fever to escape the mess they have created ever increases. Like a fussy child who uses meltdowns to manipulate the parents, refusing to clean his room because it has gone from bad to worse, knowing mom will eventually step in and perform the rescue mission, dispensationalists frantically adopt increasing levels of mania over society and the future, much like the prophets of Baal, attempting to get Christ to come and take them home. This “winning” view has produced a landscape of losers, and it is high time for us to discard it. 
In our second episode, I invited renowned Bible teacher and scholar Gary Demar onto the PRODCAST to help us understand how, Biblically, this view does not work. For over an hour, Gary took us through one passage after another, proving how a rigid commitment to futurism does not account for what we see in the text. He showed us how wars and rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, the abomination of desolation, the great tribulation, and others are not signs of a future tribulation period under a European Antichrist. But actual historical events that happened in the lead up to the destruction of Jerusalem. And as I said, Gary Demar took on one passage after another for over an hour, completely and totally undermining that view. I highly recommend you go and check out that episode. 
Today, we will look at the more reasonable older sister of Dispensationalism, Historic Premillennialism. By Premillennialism, I mean that Jesus will return pre (which means before) He institutes His millennial reign. Unlike Amillennialism and Postmillennialism, which see Jesus currently reigning on His throne in heaven, Historic Premillennials await Christ’s future and physical reign on earth, which will last for a thousand calendar years. To properly examine this view and to show how it is deficient, I will need to move quickly, painting with broad strokes, and I will not be able to be exhaustive. My goal is to show that this view is not Biblical and actually produces anti-Biblical attitudes in the Church, which has led to the mess we are currently in in this country. That’s right, I believe Premillennialism (both Historic Premillennialism and its red-headed Dispensational heifer) is one of the chief reasons that society is murdering a million babies a year, why men are trying to become women, why our political elites are embracing Marxism and running our country into moral chaos, and so much more. How can I say that? Because when a view so successfully undermines the Church’s mission, causing her to retreat, to stop making disciples, to stop advancing, and to cease holding culture accountable, should we be surprised when pagans run into all kinds of rank and disgusting errors? If you leave raw hamburger meat out on the counter it putrifies. That is what meat does when it is not preserved in the refrigerator. In the same way, Premillennialism left society to hide in the eschatological basement, waiting for her rapture. Sadly, while the Church has been waiting for fifty years at the rapture bus top, hands in pockets, doing little else, the meat of American culture has turned a slimy green, and the moral maggots have crept in and totally infested it. 
I hope this series, in some small way, can be a part of changing that. With that, let us begin our time today by describing the history of Historic Premillennialism. 
The History of Premillennialism
The Ancient View
Among the end-times positions, two schools of thought go back to the ancient and apostolic Church. After the canon of Scripture was closed, all of the apostles died, and as the early Church began to spread in a hostile world, there began to be prominent and influential Christian thinkers who weighed in on a variety of theological subjects to help the Church become robust in her thinking. Unfortunately for us, eschatology was one of those doctrines that took significantly more time to systematize, which means we only have scant statements and underdeveloped postulations of what the earliest Christians living in the first three centuries believed about the end-times. But, of our information, two basic views rise to the fore. 
The first view, set forth most prominently by Augustine of Hippo, is that when Christ ascended into heaven, He sat down on His throne to reign. As proponents of this view attested, he was not waiting for a future period where He would return to reign for a thousand years. He is reigning now, which made the thousand years described in Revelation 20 a non-literal number of years. To be clear, this group believed Jesus was reigning from the moment He ascended into heaven and would continue to reign over His Kingdom, the Church, until He was finished building His Kingdom. 
The other view, represented in the ancient Church, is that Jesus would return at some point in the future to reign physically on earth for a thousand years. This end-times view shows up in fragmentary form quite early in the writings of church fathers (such as Papias, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian) and was laid out most fully by a man named Irenaeus of Lyons in his work called Against Heresies in 180 AD. This view, bolstered by a commitment to a literalistic hermeneutic, tried to explain Old Testament prophecies of worldwide peace, prosperity, and global justice as a future, physical period on earth that would commence after the Messiah’s return. 
In fact, this is where postmillennialism and Premillennialism agree, seeing those Old Testament prophecies as coming physically to the earth under the reign of Christ. Postmillennialists understand these things coming gradually and increasingly upon the earth through the Church as Jesus reigns victoriously over her in heaven. The Premillennialists, however, see the current age we are living in collapsing in fantastic defeat, the Church being unsuccessful in her task to disciple the nations, which will prompt Jesus to return to a world filled with evil, to put it away, to be crowned as its new King, to reign bodily on earth for a thousand years, and near the end of that rule, a group of people will rebel against Him, and He will win a final battle. Premillennialists understand the reign of Christ to be a future event. Postmillennials understand the reign of Christ as happening now.  
The Middle Ages
As the Ancient Church began to gain ground in the Roman world, Premillennial thought also began to wane. With later apostolic fathers (such as Origen) promoting an allegorical view of the millennium, Augustine of Hippo’s towering theological influence, and Christianity becoming the official religion of the Roman empire, Premillennialism faded from the majority opinion to the minority report in the 4th century AD. 
Augustine, in particular, was influential in this transition. He argued that the millennium described in Revelation 20 was not a literal number of years, in the same way, that God does not own the cattle on a literal thousand hills, but on all hills. Instead, according to Augustine, the one thousand years represented the ongoing reign of Christ over His Church. This became the prominent view in the early Roman Catholic Church and remained the majority position in Christendom until the 16th century when a few radical offshoots of the Reformation gravitated back to premillennial thinking. For context, the view that Christ is currently reigning over His Church and not waiting for a future return for that reign to ensue has been the dominant position of Church history, especially between 400 and 1600 AD. 
The Modern Era
During the Protestant Reformation, Augustine’s eschatological allegoricalism was a decisive influence upon the magisterial reformers. This meant that the overwhelming majority position on eschatology in the Reformation was that Christ was currently reigning over His Church, not awaiting a physical reign on earth at some point in the distant future. At the same time, a few radicalized offshoots of the Reformation, such as the Mennonites and Anabaptists, departed from the allegorical view of the millennium and began constructing various end times positions. Some groups began returning to premillennial thinking, reinvigorating the discipline in seed form, which the Plymouth brethren would later take up in the 19th century. From this group, we get John Nelson Darby, who became the father of dispensational Premillennialism and is responsible for bringing Premillennialism back into the forefront of Christian eschatological thinking. 
Before the Reformation, Premillennialism was mostly unattested for nearly a thousand years of Church history. After the Reformation, it was only slightly reinvigorated through a few Reformation offshoots to become a marginal position in a predominantly Amillennial and Postmillennial world. Yet, by the 19th century, under the influence of John Nelson Darby, Dispensational Premillennialism would explode to become the primary view of eschatology in Evangelical America, still influencing most people’s views on the end-times to this day. This is not a credit to Dispensational Premillennial thinking or how accurately it conceptualizes Scripture. But, it is what happened in the history of its development. 
Dispensationalism was always a flawed view and was never really adopted among Reformed churches. Churches that held tightly to the theology of the Reformation and adopted its confessions almost entirely avoided dispensational thinking since it so clearly deviated from covenant theology and a proper hermeneutic for understanding Scripture. This was until George Eldon Ladd, a 20th-century theologian, revived Historic Premillennialism from the ashes of history, giving some Reformed thinkers a possible third option for eschatological schemas, especially among various strains of Baptists. 
Unlike Darby, who divided the Bible into arbitrary dispensations, Ladd rightly saw the Bible as one unified redemptive story, seeking to reintegrate it into His theological work. This included reintegrating Israel and the Church, whom Ladd saw as distinct redemptive peoples, yet one under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. He also rejected the rapture-driven escapism of Dispensationalism, adopting instead a posttribulational view of the rapture where the faithful suffer right alongside the pagans in Antichrist’s seven-year reign of terror before Jesus Christ returns. Ladd also correctly identified that the pietism and purely allegorical interpretation among some amillennialists did not do justice to the prophetic promises given in the Old Testament, which describes these events as future realities that will come to pass on earth and not just spiritually in heaven. All these modifications by Ladd and others were improvements and certainly reinvigorated a return to true historic Premillennialism that had been dormant since the second-century days of Ireneaus. Yet, while it was an improvement, the entire system was still built upon an entirely flawed premise. 
A Plank in the Eye Called Futurism
We are all products of the world to which we were born. Modern Premillennialism is no different. It was born into a world of German higher critical thinking, the rise of secularism and theological liberalism, and a gamut of academic disciplines seeking to undermine the sanctity and sufficiency of Holy Scripture. 
Few places in the Scriptures canon where these attacks were leveled more ferociously than onto the person and work of Jesus Christ. From accusations that He never existed and was a failed messianic upstart to Him being a false prophet who did not come back in the time frame that He had given, secularists were continually attacking the credibility of Jesus more ferociously than piranhas on a hambone. This was not a foolish strategy. If you can invalidate the author and perfecter of the Christian faith, if you can remove the cornerstone from the structure, then you can dismantle the entire structure of our faith. 
Of all the places critical scholars aim the barrel of their criticisms most effectively, it was at Jesus’ predictions contained within the Olivet Discourse. If they could show that Jesus was a false prophet, that what He predicted to happen had not come true, then they could dismiss Jesus as one of a legion of gods that were invented by mortal men. In doing that, they could live however they wanted without being held accountable to an absolute sovereign.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Human history indicates that the self-evident nonsense of an idea is seldom a barrier to it becoming the dominant philosophy of its age. That man is born free and is everywhere in chains is one. That sex is a cost-free, light recreation is another. 

According to a recent CDC report, cases of syphilis are rising in the United States. The report offers an interesting window on contemporary American culture.
First, it features the usual exceptionalism for health issues that are a part of the progressive remaking of society. Just as smoking a cigar is bad but puffing on a joint is OK, so spreading illnesses by being unvaccinated is evil while spreading disease through sexual indulgence is a mere technical problem. And it cannot be addressed in terms of any broader moral framework beyond that provided by “experts”—typically not moral philosophers or theologians but scientists. The CDC is calling for a “whole-of-nation” response to the syphilis phenomenon—a vague phrase, but one likely to be fleshed out with condoms and antibiotics rather than government funding for teaching about chastity and personal moral responsibility. For chastity and responsibility are concepts that assume a moral framework for sex, the very thing our culture has now spent many decades repudiating.
There is a real but simple lesson here for Western culture: While there is a cure for STDs, there is no cure for stupidity. The sexual revolution is one of the most obviously failed experiments ever attempted in human history and yet, rather than reject it, society keeps forging ahead. All the evidence of its failure—the urban scourge of single parenthood, the elaborate menu of diseases, the rates of abortion, the falling birth rates, the objectification and exploitation of women—is regarded as a bug of the system, a set of technical problems to be addressed with technical solutions. Then there is the development of a linguistic culture designed to render any criticism illegitimate. Children from homes where mum and dad stayed together are “privileged,” as if the love, self-discipline, and fidelity of their parents was somehow bought at the unjust cost of denying that to some other child. To point out that certain patterns of sexual behavior greatly increase the chances of catching STDs, or that a life of promiscuity might be setting the stage for twilight years of loneliness, is to be judgmental or self-righteous. Strange to tell, the same is not typically applied to those who advise that it is dangerous to cross a busy road at rush hour without waiting for a break in the traffic.
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