But even with this, McGever disregards scriptural passages on guilt, justice, repentance, and forgiveness (such as Deut. 19:15, 24:16, Lev. 19:15, Ez. 18:4, Matt. 18:21-35, Luke 19:1-10, Eph. 4:32).  He also ignores the fact that while God uses various (and often imperfect) agents to draw men unto Himself, the spiritual genealogy of every evangelical originates with Christ (I Cor. 3:3-23, Eph. 2:8-10), thus bringing a unity to all believers across time and space (Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11).

McGever, Sean. Ownership: The Evangelical Legacy of Slavery in Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2024. 240 pp. $18.00
Sean McGever joins the evangelical deconstruction project[1] with his most recent book, Ownership: The Evangelical Legacy of Slavery in Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield.  Like the other books in this genre, Ownership denounces white evangelicals for “their” theology and practice, but not on the basis of Scripture.[2]  McGever tells them right at the outset of his book that even if they deplore the black slave trade of the early modern era,[3] they are still mistaken in their view of slavery in general, among other things.  If they want to learn the truth, they must listen to and affirm the so-called singular black perspective and their white allies (6-8, 10).[4]
According to this purported position, all slavery is a sin which “God hates” (184).  To support this claim, McGever briefly describes early accounts of slavery in Genesis and the beginning of Exodus.  He then notes that Exodus 21:1-11 regulates slave acquisition, but he then glosses over the rest of the Old Testament to say that it “imagines slavery as a common component of human societies that is utilized for communal and personal gain and a negative experience that the enslaved person seeks to escape” (34-35; incidentally, McGever does not discuss the stipulations in Exodus 21:5-6 for slaves who “love” their masters and do not want to go free).  McGever does not exegete any of the passages on slavery in the New Testament either, but rather cites John Anthony McGuckin (an Eastern Orthodox priest) to say that it has “considerable tension in regard to the issue of slavery: never quite feeling confident enough to come out and denounce it explicitly, since to do so would have been tantamount to a declaration of social revolution” (36).[5]  But God, McGever implies, wanted believers to infer that slavery was 1) wrong and 2) to be peaceably abolished.
For the next eighteen hundred years of Church history (from Ignatius to the Puritans), most Christians did not see it that way or seek its total eradication.  Rather, to McGever’s dismay, a number of them sought to put limits on slave acquisition and treatment, citing Scripture.  The Great Awakening preachers accepted this reasoning and tried to apply it to the African slavery already in their contexts.  From this group of ministers, only John Wesley questioned the institution of slavery later in life due to the influence of the egalitarian Quakers, and then, he only used “natural law” to condemn it (141).
In the concluding chapters of Ownership, McGever returns his gaze to modern white evangelicals whose “spiritual genealogy . . . originates” with eighteenth century “enslavers” (170).  He exhorts these descendants to own, repent, and learn from the mistakes of the Great Awakening preachers (171, 173).[6]  This repentance, he says, must include “a posture of open arms to people of all races who have every right to navigate our open arms on their own terms and in their own timing” (173).  But even with this, McGever disregards scriptural passages on guilt, justice, repentance, and forgiveness (such as Deut. 19:15, 24:16, Lev. 19:15, Ez. 18:4, Matt. 18:21-35, Luke 19:1-10, Eph. 4:32).  He also ignores the fact that while God uses various (and often imperfect) agents to draw men unto Himself, the spiritual genealogy of every evangelical originates with Christ (I Cor. 3:3-23, Eph. 2:8-10), thus bringing a unity to all believers across time and space (Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11).
McGever continues his admonition to white evangelicals by exhorting them to listen to “unlikely voices (like the Quakers for Wesley)” (181) outside of their formative “religious influences” (176) to bring about change that pleases God.  He cites himself as an example of a man who experienced such an alteration:
To question the established norms of my Christian upbringing was something I feared to do out loud.  Instead, I had to do it in private, through hushed personal conversations and quietly learning alternate views wherever I could find them.  Most often, and even in most of my seminary experiences, I had to guide myself if I wanted to consider a different perspective.  Nearly all the Christians I was around tended to provide the best version of their view and the worst (or no) version of alternate views.  It took me quite a while to realize that the church past and present has plenty of beliefs about which faithful Christians disagree, and that there are some things that Christians have come to realize they once believed wrongly – most notably (now), the institution of slavery (181-182).
He then asks: “What alternate voices along the shore of my stream should I listen to?  How should I navigate my own internal questions and instincts about how to honor God?  What are good, less good, and flat-out bad ways to process all of this?”  He says nothing about turning to the Scriptures (Is. 8:20; Acts 17:10-12; I John 4:1), but claims: “These answers require the precious and usually decades-acquired virtue of wisdom” (182).
Since McGever’s own faith was built on a mixture of doubt, instinct, and multiple theological perspectives, he eventually began to:
depart from what I learned in my formative years.  With all due respect to my formative influences, I changed how I balance my time and focus between ministry, family, and personal health.  I changed who I choose to relate to – I have more friends and peers who are women and those who don’t look like me or have the same beliefs as I do.  I changed my views on the roles men and women undertake in the home, community, and church.  Each of these changes came slowly and after much thought and reflection.  Each of these changes represents a departure from what I once believed and how I acted several decades ago (182-183).
McGever now believes that he “cannot predict what specific changes [he] might adopt in the coming decades” (183).  Considering where other deconstructionists have gone before him, it may not be too hard to guess what changes could come next.[7]
Jonathan Peters is an administrative assistant at Reformation Bible Church and Harford Christian School in Darlington, MD.

[1] For a listing of some of the books in this project, see Jonathan Leeman, “Defending Sound Doctrine Against Deconstruction of American Evangelicalism,” 9Marks (October 14, 2021): https://www.9marks.org/journal/sound-doctrine-the-foundation-for-faithful-ministry/editors-note/.
[2] See also Jonathan Peters, “Review: Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive, and How to Respond,” Journal of Biblical Theology & Worldview 5, no 1 (Fall 2024): 109-111.
[3] Many may do so on the basis of Exodus 21:16, James 2:1, etc.
[4] Deconstructionists at times fail to recognize that there is no monolithic black perspective, just as there is no monolithic white, Asian, indigenous, male, or female perspective.  There are, however, biblical and unbiblical theologies which anyone may embrace.
[5] McGuckin (and McGever) are more or less saying that Christ and His Apostles were moral cowards, contra John 16:8, Acts 5:29, Acts 17:6, etc.
[6] Interestingly, McGever makes no mention of non-white Christians who count the eighteenth century “enslavers” as a part of their spiritual heritage.  One may wonder if McGever would also hold them “responsible” for their spiritual ancestors’ mistakes.  Phillis Wheatley, “An Elegiac Poem On the Death of that celebrated Divine, and eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Revered and Learned Mr. George Whitefield,” Phillis Wheatley Historical Society: http://www.phillis-wheatley.org/mr-george-whitefield/, Thabiti Anyabwile, “This Black Pastor Led a White Church – in 1788,” Christianity Today (May 3, 2017): https://www.christianitytoday.com/2017/05/lemuel-haynes-pioneering-african-american-pastor/, Sherard Burns, “Trusting the Theology of a Slave Owner,” in A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2004), 145-17, and Samuel Sey, “Cancel Culture and Christian Culture,” Slow to Write blog (July 3, 2020): https://slowtowrite.com/cancel-culture-and-christian-culture/.
[7] Neil Shenvi notes that the “‘deconstructive’ approach to theology is necessarily a universal acid.  Even if [deconstructive authors] weren’t explicitly committed to challenging evangelical doctrine broadly, their methodological approach makes such an outcome inevitable.  This erosion is, perhaps, one of my greatest fears.  I worry that pastors will embrace these books thinking that their application can be confined to, say, race alone.  But once a white pastor endorses the view that he — as a white male — is blinded by his own white supremacy, unable to properly understand relevant biblical principles due to his social location, and in need of the ‘lived experience’ of oppressed minorities to guide him, how long before someone in his congregation applies the same reasoning to his beliefs about gender?  Or sexuality?”  Neil Shenvi, “Sociology as Theology: The Deconstruction of Power in (Post)Evangelical Scholarship,” Eikon (November 21, 2021): https://cbmw.org/2021/11/21/sociology-as-theology-the-deconstruction-of-power-in-postevangelical-scholarship/.

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Praiseworthy as they are for their strong commitment to an inspired and perspicuous Bible, our dispensational brothers have stumbled badly in their interpretation of (OTKP and) the Revelation. Given the widespread popularity of this interpretation, it will serve us well to summarize the reasons why. First, they have misunderstood the intended audience of the book, which is the Church, the whole Church, and nothing but the Church. The future of ethnic Israel is nowhere in view.

Note: This essay is an excerpt from a forthcoming book, The Gist of the Revelation: An Amillennial Overview of the Grand Finale of All Scripture (Redemption Press)
Here is a key to a few of the acronyms used in the book and the essay below:
DNT = The Didactic New Testament (i.e., the distinctly teaching portions of the gospels, Acts, and the epistles)
EOP = Era of (Gospel) Proclamation (i.e., the season of Christ’s heavenly mediatorial reign, stretching from Pentecost to the Consummation at his return in glory, during which the Church proclaims to gospel to the nations)
OTKP = Old Testament Kingdom Prophecy (i.e., OT prophecies fulfilled post-Pentecost, speaking typologically and figuratively of New Covenant realities, and needing to be interpreted accordingly)

Why does Dispensationalism have such a powerful grip on the evangelical imagination?
One answer—and perhaps the most important—is the apparent harmony between the dispensational interpretation of Daniel 9:24–27 (i.e., the prophecy of the seventy sevens) and the structure and contents of the Revelation. In the eyes of the dispensationalist, these two texts seem so clearly to confirm each other that the truth of his theological system cannot possibly be in doubt, no matter what the DNT may have to say about the central themes of biblical eschatology: the nature and structure of the Kingdom of God, the nature and structure of the Consummation, and the proper NT method of interpreting OT Kingdom prophecies.
I reckon this perceived harmony to be an illusion, an illusion that compromises biblical truth and works positive harm to God’s people. In this essay I do what I can to dispel it, hoping to win my dispensational brothers back to the classic amillennial faith of our Protestant forefathers, and to the one true Blessed Hope of the Church.
The journey here will involve three steps. First, we’ll look briefly at the dispensational interpretation of Daniel 9:24-27. Next, we’ll discuss the dispensational interpretation of the Revelation, spotlighting its (alleged) connections with Daniel’s prophecy and offering amillennial correctives. Finally, we’ll inquire as to exactly why our dispensational brothers have so egregiously misunderstood the Grand Finale of all Scripture.
The Dispensational Interpretation of Daniel’s Seventy Sevens
Here, from the mouth an imaginary dispensationalist, is a short statement of the standard dispensational interpretation of Daniel 9:24–27:
The theme of the prophecy is not the future of spiritual Israel (i.e., the Church), but rather of ethnic Israel, the physical seed of Abraham. Daniel’s people and Daniel’s city are not spiritually circumcised Jews and Gentiles, but the Jewish race and their historic capital (9:24). Throughout OT times, God promised the latter a theocratic kingdom, to be mediated by his Messiah. But before ethnic Israel can enter the promised Kingdom Age, it must first traverse Daniel’s “seventy sevens.” These are weeks of calendar years, totaling 490. The sixty-nine weeks of verse 25 began with Artaxerxes’s decree to rebuild Jerusalem (445 BC); they ended at the birth (or triumphal entry) of Christ. Verse 26 gives us the events of the sixty-ninth week: the week in which Christ was rejected, and after which the Roman general Titus came and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. But just here, something unexpected happens: God (through Gabriel) suddenly leaps over the entire Church Age (now some two thousand years long), thereby keeping his dealings with his heavenly people (i.e., the Church) a mystery later to be unveiled by Christ. Accordingly, verse 27 gives us future events set to occur during the seventieth week: the week that follows the Secret Rapture of the Church. Once that occurs, “God’s prophetic time clock” will begin to tick again. That is, he will now resumes his dealings with the (physical) sons of Abraham.
This week of seven years is called the Tribulation. At the beginning of the Tribulation, the Antichrist will make a covenant with ethnic Israel. In the middle of the week he will break it, suppressing Jewish worship, and defiling the (restored) Jewish temple. This marks the beginning of the Great Tribulation, which will last a literal three and a half years. At their end, Christ will return in glory, destroy the Antichrist, and welcome the Jewish saints and gentile converts who have survived the Tribulation into the promised Kingdom Age. According to Revelation 20, it will last 1000 literal years.1
The Dispensational Interpretation of the Revelation, With Amillennarian Replies
We turn now to the dispensational interpretation of the Revelation. In the paragraphs ahead I will give the gist of the dispensational interpretation of each section of the Revelation. Then, in italics, I will offer an amillennarian reply. Along the way I will point out how the dispensationalist’s interpretation of Daniel 9:24-27 controls his thinking about the Revelation, and explain why I believe his conclusions are in error.
Dispensational Teaching 
Chapter 1 of the Revelation gives us a vision of the exalted Christ, the One who will first bring to pass God’s purpose for the Church (chapters 2–5), and thereafter God’s purpose for ethnic Israel and the believing nations who survive the Tribulation (chapters 6–20).
Amillennarian Reply
Yes, chapter 1 gives us a revelation of the exalted Christ, the Lord of the remainder of Salvation History. But no, the book does not give us God’s twofold purpose and plan, first for the Church, and then for ethnic Israel. Rather, it gives us God’s singular purpose and plan for his one and only people: the Church, comprised of elect Jews and Gentiles of all times. Here, however, the emphasis falls upon God’s New Covenant people, whom the High King of heaven will empower to make their difficult spiritual pilgrimage through the Era of Gospel Proclamation.
Dispensational Teaching
Chapters 2–3 give us the Lord’s messages to the seven churches of Asia. Real as those churches were, they also symbolize the universal Church, and (for those of us who lean to an historicist interpretation of the Revelation) the historical stages through which she must pass over the course of the Church Age. This age is the “mystery parenthesis” that neither Daniel nor any of the other the OT prophets foresaw. It is the age that Christ unveiled when, in anticipation of his rejection by Israel, he said, “I will build my Church” (Matt. 16:18). Thus, in chapters 2–3, Christ is speaking to the Church, about the Church during the Church Age. Soon, however, he will be speaking to Israel, about Israel (and the nations) during the Tribulation, and on into the Millennium.
Amillennarian Reply 
Yes, the true nature of the Church, as the spiritual Body of the Messiah, was a mystery hidden from the OT prophets (Eph. 3:1-13). However, the prophets did indeed foresee the Church, and were moved by the Spirit to speak about her, albeit under a veil of OT imagery (e.g., Isa. 60; Jer. 3:16-18; Ezek. 37-48). And this is true of the prophet Daniel himself, who was speaking about the Church in Daniel 9:25b–27! As for the Revelation, in chapters 2–3 the High Prophet of heaven speaks to the Church about the various strengths and weaknesses she will manifest during her pilgrimage to the World to Come. Then, in chapters 6–20 he speaks to her about the persons, powers, events, and institutions she will encounter along the way. In the Revelation, ethnic Israel is never in view, whereas Israel’s antitype, the true spiritual Church, is always and only in view.
Dispensational Teaching
In chapters 4–5 we have John’s vision of heaven, its occupants, and the worship with which they fill it. The apostle hears a voice, saying, “Come up here” (4:1).
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Moses ascended the earthly mountain of God and came down with the law written on tablets of stone. But later, he expressed a longing that all the Lord’s people might have the Spirit (Num. 11:29). The law of Moses could command but it could not empower. By contrast, Jesus ascended the heavenly mountain of God and came down in the Spirit to write His law on our hearts.

At a PGA Tour tournament in October 2015, Ben Crane disqualified himself after completing his second round. He did so at considerable financial cost. No matter—Crane believed the personal cost of not doing it would be greater (encouraged by a devotional article he had read that morning by Davis Love III, the distinguished former Ryder Cup captain).
Crane realized he had broken one of the more recondite rules of golf. If I followed the story rightly, while in a hazard looking for his ball, he leaned his club on a stone. He abandoned the ball, took the requisite penalty for doing so, played on, and finished his round. He would have made the Friday night cut comfortably; a very successful weekend financially beckoned. Then Ben Crane thought: “Should I have included a penalty for grounding my club in a hazard?” Sure enough (Rule 13.4a). So he disqualified himself.
Crane has been widely praised for his action. No avalanche of spiteful or demeaning attacks on cyberspace or hate mail for being narrow-minded. All honor to him. Intriguingly, no one seems to have said or written, “Ben Crane is such a legalist.”
How odd it is to see so much praise for his detailed attention to the rules of golf, and yet the opposite when it comes to the rules of life, the (much more straightforward) law of God, even in the church.
There is a problem somewhere.
The Problem
Neither Jesus nor Paul had a problem with the law. Paul wrote that his gospel of grace upholds and establishes the law (Rom. 3:31)—even God’s laws in their negative form, since the “grace of God . . . teaches us to say ‘No’” (Titus 2:11–12, NIV). And remember Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:17–19? Our attitude to the law is a litmus test of our relationship to the kingdom of God.
So what is the problem? The real problem is that we do not understand grace. If we did, we would also realize why John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace,” could write, “Ignorance of the nature and design of the law is at the bottom of most religious mistakes.”
There is a deep issue here. In Scripture, the person who understands grace loves law. (Incidentally, mere polemics against antinomianism can never produce this.)
Think again of Ben Crane. Why keep the complex rules of golf? Because you love the game. Something similar, but greater, is true of the believer. Love the Lord, and we will love His law—because it is His. All is rooted in this beautiful biblical simplicity.
Think of it in terms of three men and the three “stages” or “epochs” they represent: Adam, Moses, and Jesus.
Adam
At creation, God gave commandments. They expressed His will. And since He is a good, wise, loving, and generous God, His commandments are always for our best. He wants to be a Father to us.
As soon as God created man and woman as His image (Gen. 1:26–28—a hugely significant statement), He gave them statutes to follow (v. 29). The context here makes clear the rationale: He is Lord; they are His image. He made them to reflect Him. He is the cosmic Overlord, and they are the earthly under-lords. His goal is their mutual enjoyment of one another and creation in a communion of life (1:26–2:3). So, He has given them a start—a garden in Eden (2:7). He wants them to extend that garden to the ends of the earth, and to enjoy it as miniature creators, images imitating the great original Creator (1:28–29).
God’s creation commands then had in view our reflecting His image and glory. His image-bearers are made to be like Him. In one form or another, all divine commands have this principle enshrined in them: “You are my image and likeness. Be like me!” This is reflected in His command: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2).
Implied here is that God’s image-bearers are created, hardwired as it were, to reflect Him. Yes, there are external laws given to them, but those laws simply provide specific applications of the “laws” inbuilt in the divine image, laws that are already on the conscience.
It was instinctive then for Adam and Eve to imitate God, to be like Him, because they were created as His image and likeness—just as little Seth would instinctively behave like his father, Adam, because he was “in his likeness, after his image” (Gen. 5:3). Like father, like son.
But then came the fall: sin, lack of conformity to God’s revealed law, and distortion of the image resulted in malfunctions of the inner human instincts. The mirror image turned away from the gaze and the life of God, and since then all people (except Christ) have shared in this condition. The Lord remains the same. His design for His image remains the same. But the image is marred. The under-lord who was created to turn the dust into a garden has become dust himself:
By the sweat of your faceyou shall eat bread,till you return to the ground,for out of it you were taken;for you are dust,and to dust you shall return. (Gen. 3:19)
We remain the image of God, and the laws that govern how we live best are unchanged. But now we are haggard and spent, twisted within, off center, distorted, carrying the aroma of death. Once chief operating officers, we are now vagrants who survive only by stealing from the Owner of the company (Yahweh and Son) who provided for us so generously. The law within functions still, but unreliably at best, not because the law is faulty but because we are.
For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. (Rom. 2:14–15; see also 7:7–25)
But God wants His portrait—His image—back.
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