So, are you saying heaven and earth have passed away? Is not the passing away of heaven and earth part of "all be fulfilled"?
Actually, the passing away of this present old world is not foretold in the prophets, only the beginning of the new creation is foretold. There is a Rabbinic saying that the prophets spoke not except of the days of Messiah. Everything that was foretold in the Old Testament, whether through prophecy or through types and shadows, all spoke of the Messianic age, which is now. And the new creation that was foretold has already begun, and we who are alive in Christ, who are “new creatures created in Christ Jesus,” we are part of the new creation, the new Jerusalem is the capitol of it, and every soul that is saved is another stone in the walls of that new city. The passing away of this present old world has not yet come because God is not finished yet with his redemptive work and the new creation He is making and the souls he is saving and raising up in it. When He finishes his new creation, then the old will pass away, just like it wasn’t until the New Covenant was established at the Cross before the Old Covenant passed away.
You added the word "law" in "All the law was fulfilled". It is not just the law that must be fulfilled, but everything, including the prophets.
But what you are saying is that some jots and tittles of the law have been fulfilled and passed away but others have not. That is precisely what Jesus said could not happen. If everything hasn’t been fulfilled, then everything, the whole law, every jot and tittle, is still in force. And yet it is self-evident that is not the case, else God would not have allowed everything He provided for the law's observance to be destroyed.
I know full well how the times and seasons of the land work. Please do not assume you are talking to an ignorant man and exalt yourself by categorizing me as such.
What I assume is that you have been taught these premillennial interpretations, and my point was that since you ARE familiar with the times and seasons and the intricacies of the calendar, I'm counting on that knowledge to lead you to take a critical look at these interpretations, and I'm also counting on you to do so fairly.
The former rain of the Holy Spirit began after Yeshua planted the seeds of the Gospel in the hearts of his disciples. The harvest then began growing.
Here’s a basic idea that I would like you to consider. We have two “testaments.” The Old Testament is the former testament, or the former days, or the former rains when the Spirit of God was given “moderately” as Joel points out: “Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God: for he
hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and
the latter rain in the first month … and it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids
in those days will I pour out my spirit.”
The former rains was the Holy Spirit as it was given “moderately” in the former Old Testament days and only to the select few. But the latter rain in these latter New Testament days is an outpouring upon all flesh, without moderation. Paul says: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners
spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, has
in these last days spoken unto us by his Son…” (Hebrews 1:1)
The Old Testament with the Mosaic Covenant is the “former” days and the former things. The New Testament with the New Covenant is the “latter” days and the latter things. The former rain was the Holy Spirit given in moderation in the former days to the select few. The latter rain is the Holy Spirit poured out “in these last days” upon all flesh.
The harvest was already ripe when Jesus walked the earth: “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. Say ye not, there are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already unto harvest. And he that reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, one soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon you bestowed no labor: other men labored, and you are entered into their labours.”
And there are other verses where Jesus speaks of the Jewish nation already being ready for harvest. He also speaks of the Jewish nation being a vineyard and how it was time to gather in the fruit but when the Lord sent men to collect it they were stoned and driven away and then the Lord of the Vineyard sent his own son whom they killed.
All those parables were about the Jewish nation and the time had come for God to reap the harvest from the seeds that the holy prophets of old had sown and the former rains had watered and to gather in the good seed into God’s storehouse. That’s why God allowed 40 years for the Gospel to be preached to Jews everywhere, beginning in Jerusalem and then in Judaea and Samaria and to every nation of the Diaspora where Jews had been scattered. And that’s why in the Revelation the 144,000 symbolic number for all the saved Jews are called the “firstfruits,” because their souls are the firstfruits of the harvest of the Gospel (the Gospel was to the Jew first, then to the Gentiles). And after the good seed was gathered into God’s storehouse, then the end came with a firey judgment and punishment when millions of Jews were slain in that firey/bloody 7-year war, the last of Daniel’s 70 weeks allotted to the Jewish nation when the chaff was gathered and burned up.
And so ended the former things, after they were fulfilled by the establishment of the latter things. Old Testament/New Testament. Old Covenant/New Covenant. Former Days/Latter Days. Former Rain/Latter Rain.
The premillennial view just basically ignores the Jewish nation, both in terms of the preaching of the Gospel and the salvation of multitudes of Jews, the first members of Christ’s body and actually the very foundation of the church. The premil view also completely ignores the catastrophic end of the Old Covenant and the Jewish state in the generation of the coming of Jesus as if it doesn’t mean anything or somehow doesn’t count. They are gravely mistaken.
The reign of Messiah and his resurrected people throughout the 1,000 years Satan is bound is the new heavens and new earth. Do not be deceived into thinking an entirely new literal heaven and earth will replace this old one.
Not so. The Revelation states that “
when the thousand years are expired, Satan will be loosed” and will attack the camp of the saints and the beloved city and God will rain down fire from heaven and devour them and
then heaven and earth will flee away from the face of Jesus as he appears seated on his throne and all the dead are raised to stand before him in judgment. That is when this present old heavens and earth will pass away and there will be a new heavens and a new earth,
after the 1000 years are expired, not during the 1000 years.
BTW, the fact that sin still exists awaiting for the glorified Messiah to get rid of that leaven permanently shows why the shadow of the Feast of Unleavened Bread remains. When sin is no more, the FOUB will cease.
The unleavened bread does not represent our bodies, it represented the body of Jesus. That’s why during that last Passover he took that unleavened bread and broke it and gave it to his disciples telling them to eat it, that it was his body which was broken for them. That was fulfilled, and that “bread,” that sinless body that was sacrificed for us, that’s the bread that those of us who are saved must eat if we are to have life.
“And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body … Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoso eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him. As the living Father has sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eats me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eats of this bread shall live for ever.”
Those of us who belong to Christ, who eat of this sacrifice, who eat this unleavened bread which is the body of Christ, we already have eternal life, our old dead spirit has already been raised up to life in God’s Kingdom, and on the very last day the Christ who dwells in us will also raise up our mortal bodies to immortality in a new heavens and new earth where sin and death itself will cease to exist.
I know that’s not what the premillennial view teaches, but that’s what the Gospel teaches.
In Christ,
Pilgrimer