Introduction
This is Part 5 in our ongoing series examining the New Testament’s de-creation and resurrection language against both Kenneth Gentry’s partial preterism and Tim Martin’s Covenant Creationism. In Parts 1 and 2 we established that the “heavens and earth” which pass away in the New Testament (Psalm 102; Hebrews 1 & 12; 2 Peter 3; Revelation 20–21) consistently refer to the old-covenant order established at Sinai (Isaiah 51:15–16; Deuteronomy 32:6), not to the physical creation of Genesis 1. In Part 3 we answered the claim that Matthew 23:35 (the blood of Abel) forces Genesis 1–3 to be re-read as the inauguration of a non-physical old-covenant world. We showed that Jesus is speaking of corporate and representative guilt filling up the long measure of hostility that began with Cain, not of the chronological beginning of the Mosaic order removed in AD 70. We also demonstrated that Hebrews 11 treats Abel and the cloud of witnesses as real historical people, that 1 Corinthians 15 draws its illustrations from the literal physical realities of Genesis 1, and that Adam is the federal head of the order of sin and spiritual death while remaining distinct from the later Mosaic covenant. In Part 4 we unpacked the whole of 1 Corinthians 15 and showed that Paul’s Adam–Christ parallel and resurrection language describe the progressive, corporate raising of the Adamic/Mosaic body of Sin and Death into the spiritual body of Christ, consummated when the old-covenant order passed away in AD 70. That same part joined Isaiah 25:6–9 (the banquet, the swallowing of death, the wiping of tears) to 1 Corinthians 15:54 and Revelation 21:4. That link matters again here: Gentry’s AD 70 marriage supper cannot be kept if Isaiah 25 / 1 Corinthians 15 are postponed to another banquet.
The present study expands that foundation on two fronts and organizes the entire discussion around a single controlling thesis. Scripture consistently moves from physical/historical realities that furnish the archetype and source imagery, through covenantal/typological application, to climactic spiritual/Christological fulfillment. Futurism errs by demanding physical-to-physical continuity from Genesis to the end. Covenant Creation errs by demanding spiritual-to-spiritual identity from the start. Full Preterism alone preserves the biblical pattern: physical creation and Eden → covenantal typological application (Sinai, Isaiah 51, the Mosaic order) → spiritual New-Covenant fulfillment (Revelation 21–22). This is the same movement Scripture follows with land, temple, sacrifices, priesthood, Jerusalem, circumcision, and every other Old-Covenant type and shadow at issue here. The antitype does not require us to deny the physical reality of the type. That is the pattern governing these types; it is not a claim that every line of Scripture moves in only one direction.
After this article first appeared, Jeff Vaughn and Tim Martin replied in Facebook comments. They have still declined a written book debate. Their comments do not overturn the texts treated below. They largely restate the original claims, accuse the refutations of being “strawmen,” and add a few extra inferences that still fail when tested against Genesis, the prophets, Paul, Jesus, and Hebrews. Those replies are answered under the claims they touch, not parked in an appendix.
First, this article addresses Tim Martin’s Covenant Creationism and the related “covenant-only Adam” arguments advanced by Jeff Vaughn and others. Tim Martin and I are both full preterists. That shared conviction must not obscure a sharp distinction on creation itself.
I need to begin with a public apology. For many years I remained open to seeing what Covenant Creation might develop, and I even encouraged others to keep an open mind toward it. At one point I speculated that Adam might have been the first “covenant man” God created without necessarily being the first man who ever lived. I never denied that God literally formed Adam from the dust of the ground. I also never denied that, even if Genesis 1–2 were somehow not describing the material origins of the universe, other clear texts in both Testaments still affirm that God created the physical heavens, the earth, and the seas. I did see a problem in that those OT and NT texts are cross-referenced back to Genesis 1–2 and wanted to see how the Covenant Creation movement would address this.
When Covenant Creation first emerged, Tim Martin and Jeff Vaughn themselves acknowledged that elsewhere in Scripture God did in fact create the physical heavens, earth, and seas. Over time they systematically eliminated every one of those texts in an attempt to remain consistent with their non-physical reading of Genesis 1–2. The same drive for consistency produced increasingly strained interpretations of the Flood: the waters of Genesis 1:2–10 reimagined as Gentiles; therefore, the Flood waters of Genesis 6–9 became Gentile armies, the ark a city, and the animals people. None of this is in Genesis 6–9 or 2 Peter 3. The cumulative result is an increasingly unfalsifiable hermeneutic in which physical details are reassigned symbolic meanings whenever their ordinary referents conflict with the system.
I failed to pay sufficient attention to these eisegetical errors as they developed. Whatever latitude Christians debate concerning the literary structure, chronology, or duration of Genesis 1, a system that ultimately eliminates Scripture’s affirmation that God is the Creator of the actual material heavens and earth has crossed from an unconventional Genesis interpretation into a denial of a foundational Christian doctrine of creation. Full Preterists can and must remain united on the timing and nature of the Second Coming while firmly rejecting any reading of Genesis that denies that doctrine.
Second, this article continues the series’ critique of Kenneth Gentry’s partial preterism. Gentry is not consistent in his handling of the “new heavens and new earth.” He takes 2 Peter 3 (Peter’s closely related new-creation expectation, expressed in language substantially continuous with Isaiah 65–66) as a future, physical end of the material cosmos at the close of world history, while taking Revelation 21 (also drawing on Isaiah 65–66) as the old-covenant heavens and earth that passed away in AD 70 and the new-covenant order that replaced it. He describes John’s language in Revelation 21 as the metaphorical passing away of the first heaven and earth and the securing of the new-covenant church as a new creation. Yet he then reintroduces a second, future, physical passing away of the heavens and earth and a second, future, physical arrival of a new heavens and new earth in order to satisfy a later physical consummation. The result is a double eschatology that neither Testament prophesies. The New Testament presents one consummative complex—the Parousia, judgment, resurrection, end of the age, and arrival of the new creation—described as “soon,” “near,” “quickly,” “about to be,” and that “will not delay.” Partial preterists will object that they do not call the AD 70 coming the Second Advent. Different labels do not create two consummative complexes if the New Testament binds coming, judgment, resurrection, and new creation into one imminent hope.
We will also show that John’s linguistic parallels and recapitulation (Revelation 6:14; 16:20; 20:11; 21:1) place Revelation 20:11 in the same AD 70 de-creation Gentry already grants for chapters 6, 16, and 21. Both Gentry’s marriage/divorce motif and Martin’s admission that God married Israel at Sinai converge on one conclusion: the biblical complex in which covenant formation, marriage, covenantal heavens-and-earth imagery, later divorce and judgment, and the fall of the unfaithful city converge is the Mosaic-Israelite order removed in AD 70—not Genesis 1.
Doug Wilson’s published concessions on Isaiah 65–66, 2 Peter 3, and Revelation 21 belong in the same file. Wilson takes the first heaven and earth as the Judaic aeon and the new heaven and earth as the Christian aeon, overlapping until the Temple fell in AD 70. He explicitly denies that those texts describe the post-Second Coming eternal state. That is the reading Gentry also gives Revelation 21—until a later physical consummation is reintroduced.
We refrain from making an explicitly named covenant in Genesis 1–3 carry an argument the Genesis text itself does not make. Whatever one concludes about a theological “covenant of works” or Hosea 6:7, Scripture distinguishes the Adamic order of Sin and Death from the later Mosaic covenant. Adam is the historical and corporate head of the order of sin and spiritual death that affects all humanity; that Adamic order is broader and earlier than the Mosaic covenant (Romans 5:14; Galatians 3:17; Romans 5:20; Hebrews 8–9). What passed away in AD 70 is the Mosaic old-covenant order. The deeper Adamic problem is resolved in Christ, the last Adam, for all who are in Him.
All of the “covenant-only Adam” arguments fail. Scripture presents Adam as the first man—biological and federal head of the entire human race—formed from the dust of a physical earth and placed in a physical garden and land of Eden. The physical creation carries typological significance from the beginning; it is never reduced to a purely spiritual or Israel-only construct. The same historical Adam of Genesis 2 that Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15:45–47 remains the necessary type for the last Adam. We allow flexibility on whether the “days” of Genesis 1 are six literal 24-hour days or longer periods. We also allow the possibility of a local Flood, provided all humanity was concentrated in that region at the time, so that only eight souls survived (Genesis 7:21–23; 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5). In either framework the biblical claim that Adam is the first man remains intact. Whatever models are proposed for reconciling Genesis with scientific reconstruction, the question before us is what Genesis and the New Testament themselves claim concerning Adam.
Initially Tim Martin and I were going to have a limited written debate on Isaiah 51:15–16. I was going to affirm that those verses describe the Mosaic old-covenant heavens and earth established at Sinai, when God married Israel. Tim was going to affirm that they describe the coming new-covenant heavens and earth in AD 70. After it had been made clear that this was not a debate on Genesis 1–3, Tim said he intended to bring those Genesis issues in anyway, because I had said I agreed with John Owen’s treatment of Isaiah 51:15–16. That was a violation of the agreed proposition. I canceled that limited debate for that reason. I also said publicly that if Tim apologized for breaking the agreement, I would resume it. He offered no apology. Instead he claimed I was “running away” from debating him on Isaiah 51 and Genesis 1.
That charge was false. I then widened the invitation to a written book debate with David Green and me on one side and Tim Martin and Jeff Vaughn on the other, so that Genesis 1:1, Isaiah 51:15–16, Eden, and a host of other texts could be included under stated dual affirmatives. Both Genesis 1:1 and Isaiah 51:15–16 were included and yet Tim claimed I was “running from them.” The Eden question of Isaiah 51:3 is already treated in this article. They declined that book debate. Facebook comments are not a substitute for it. So who is really “running away” from the debate? Here is the dual-affirmative debate they declined. I should note that they wanted Don Preston to moderate the debate and yet Don said this format looked great:
The Plain Teaching of Genesis and the New Testament
Genesis 1:1–2:3 describes God creating the heavens and the earth—the totality of the physical cosmos—and filling it with light, sky, dry land, vegetation, celestial bodies, sea creatures, birds, land animals, and finally humanity. Genesis 1:26–28 records the creation of mankind in God’s image with the mandate to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. Genesis 2 supplies the detailed account of the sixth day: the Lord God forms the man from the dust of the ground, breathes into him the breath of life, plants a garden in the land of Eden in the east, and places the man there. Four rivers flow out of Eden, two of which (the Tigris and Euphrates) remain identifiable. The man is given a helper corresponding to him; the narrator then declares the institution of marriage for all subsequent humanity (Genesis 2:24). Eve is named “the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20). Genesis 5:1–2 summarizes: “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.” Genesis 5 traces Noah back to Adam. Genesis 10 traces the post-Flood nations from Noah’s sons. 1 Chronicles 1 and Luke 3 preserve the same Adamic genealogy.
The New Testament repeatedly confirms the historical-human reading of Adam and Eve. Jesus grounds the permanence of marriage in the creation of male and female “from the beginning of creation” (Mark 10:6; Matthew 19:4–5). Paul declares that God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). The full treatment of Acts 17:26–31 against Covenant Creation and against Gentry’s handling of μέλλω is reserved for Part 6. In Romans 5:12–21 and 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, 45–49, Adam is “the first man,” the one through whom sin and death entered the world and spread to all, the counterpart to Christ the last Adam. As we saw in Part 4, Paul quotes Genesis 2:7 and describes that first man as “from the earth, earthy” (ek gēs choikos). The typology of first man / second man, earthy / heavenly, living soul / life-giving spirit only works if the first Adam is the real historical head of the race created from the earth. Covenant Creationism collapses the historical type into its later covenantal application; Paul preserves the historical Adam so that the last Adam can remain the greater antitype.
The pattern governing the types at issue here moves from real historical/physical realities that furnish the archetype and source of the imagery, through the Mosaic covenantal order, to their superior spiritual fulfillment in Christ. An original physical creation can and does supply the imagery subsequently applied to the creation of Israel’s covenant world at Sinai, just as the physical temple, land, priesthood, and sacrifices supply the imagery later applied to Christ and the Church. The later spiritual or covenantal use of an earlier physical reality does not erase the physical reality from which the imagery was drawn.
Jeff Vaughn’s Arguments That Adam Is Not the First Man — Claims, Facebook Counters, and Refutations
The charge that the original article was a “strawman” does not survive contact with the published Covenant Creation claims. The system has argued that Adam is the first covenant man rather than the first human; that Genesis 1–2 is the inauguration of a covenantal world rather than material origins; that later de-creation texts should be read back into Genesis; and that physical details may be reassigned whenever they threaten that reading. Naming those implications is not a strawman. It is taking the system at its word and testing it against the text.
Claim 1. Adam is only the first covenant man, not the first human. Other people already existed outside the garden.
Vaughn’s counter. The article supposedly invents a “pre-Adamic race” charge they never made, or else Cain’s fear is treated as if it settled the issue by itself.
Refutation. Genesis 2:5–7 states there was no man to work the ground until God formed the man from the dust and breathed into him. That is not silence. It is a narrative claim that the man God forms is the man whose absence had just been noted. Genesis 3:20 calls Eve “the mother of all living.” Genesis 4 does not introduce a second created race; it narrates the first family after the fall: Cain, Abel, then Seth, with Cain taking a wife from the only human line the book has mentioned. Cain’s fear (4:14) does not require a pre-Adamic population. Genesis does not state that Cain departed immediately after Abel’s death, nor does it enumerate every child born to Adam and Eve before Genesis 5:4 summarizes their “sons and daughters.” The text therefore supplies no necessity for inserting a separately created human race. If the counter is “we never said those people were a different species, only that they were outside the covenant,” the narrative problem remains: Genesis never mentions them, never distinguishes covenant humans from non-covenant humans in chapters 1–5, and then traces all nations from Noah’s three sons after a judgment on “all flesh.” Jesus and Paul treat Adam and Eve as the beginning of humanity “from the beginning of creation,” not as the beginning of Israel’s covenant.
Claim 2. ’ādām in Genesis 1 is corporate Israel, or covenant humanity, not the first human pair.
Vaughn’s counter. Word studies and later covenantal uses of “man” are said to control Genesis 1.
Refutation. Genesis 5:1–2 names the male and female of Genesis 1 “Man” when they were created and then traces a genealogy from that Man to Seth, Enosh, Kenan, and on to Noah. Luke 3 ends Jesus’ genealogy at “Adam, the son of God.” Corporate Israel is not in those verses. Israel is formed from Abraham’s line many chapters later. Later covenantal uses of “man” or “Adam” (including Hosea 6:7, whatever one makes of it) cannot erase the first use in a book that immediately genealogizes that Man as an individual father. Paul in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 treats Adam as one man whose act has a counterpart in one man, Christ. A corporate-Israel Adam leaves Paul without a first man and leaves Luke without a head of the genealogy.
Claim 3. Genesis 1–2 is temple/covenant inauguration, therefore not an account of material origins.
Vaughn’s counter. Granting temple symbolism is said to grant the whole Covenant Creation reading. “We never denied a physical cosmos; we denied that Genesis 1 is describing it.”
Refutation. Temple imagery in Eden is real and important. Eden prefigures the sanctuary. A sanctuary copy does not cancel the thing copied. Genesis 2 gives ground, rivers, gold, bdellium, onyx, and named waterways. Later writers may use creation language for Sinai and Zion without rewriting Genesis 1 into a non-physical charter. The counter that “we believe in a physical cosmos, just not in this text” is addressed below under Genesis 2:4. It does not meet the sentence that names the heavens and the earth God made and then locates a garden on that earth.
Claim 4. Matthew 23:35 (the blood of Abel) proves Genesis begins the old-covenant world that ended in AD 70.
Vaughn’s counter. If Abel belongs to the measure filled up in that generation, Eden must already be the old covenant.
Refutation. This was Part 3. Jesus traces a representative line of righteous blood from Abel to Zechariah in order to fill up Jerusalem’s measure. He is not dating the start of the Mosaic covenant to Eden. The point is corporate and representative guilt across Israel’s history of killing the righteous, beginning with the first murder, not a chronological claim that Sinai starts in Genesis 2. Hebrews 11 lists Abel among historical saints who lived by faith before Sinai, alongside Enoch, Noah, and Abraham. Abel is a real man whose faith still speaks. He is not a cipher for “first old-covenant worshiper.” If Matthew 23:35 turned Abel into the first Mosaic man, Hebrews 11 would be listing the inauguration of Sinai in a chapter that explicitly places the patriarchs before the law’s cultus.
Claim 5. Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 only need a covenant head, not a first biological man.
Vaughn’s counter. Federal headship can be covenantal without being the origin of the race; the article supposedly confuses biology with theology.
Refutation. Part 4 treated this at length. Paul calls Adam “the first man” and Christ “the second man.” He quotes Genesis 2:7. Death spread to all because all sinned, and death reigned from Adam to Moses—before the law. A merely Israelite covenant head does not explain death’s reign over those without the Mosaic law (Romans 5:13–14). Biology and federal headship are not rivals in Paul. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the last Adam is from heaven. If the first Adam is only “first covenant Israelite,” the type collapses and the last Adam is no longer last Adam of the race but only last covenant administrator. That is not Paul’s argument.
Claim 6. The Flood is merely covenantal or symbolic judgment imagery (waters as Gentiles, ark as city, animals as people), not a judgment on the world of mankind.
Vaughn’s counter. 2 Peter 3 already uses the Flood typologically of covenant de-creation; therefore Genesis 6–9 may itself be read as covenant imagery.
Refutation. Genesis 6–9, 1 Peter 3:20, and 2 Peter 2:5 speak of eight persons, a world of the ungodly, and the destruction of the ancient world. 2 Peter 3 uses that Flood as a type of the coming de-creation of the present heavens and earth—the old-covenant order in Peter’s argument (Part 2)—without turning Noah’s waters into armies or the ark into a city. Typological use of a historical Flood is the biblical pattern. Turning the Flood narrative itself into Gentiles, a city-ark, and human “animals” is the backward move.
Claim 7. Wordplay on ’îsh and ’ādām shows Adam is covenant male, not first human.
Vaughn’s counter. The lexical distinction is said to be ignored or flattened.
Refutation. Hebrew uses both words for human beings in ordinary narrative. Genesis 2:23–24 moves from the man and his wife to the ordinance for a man (’îsh) leaving father and mother. Jesus cites that verse as creation ordinance for marriage as such (Matthew 19:4–5), not as a Sinai statute. A wordplay can be present without converting the narrative into a covenant charter for Israel alone. If ’îsh versus ’ādām proved “covenant man only,” Jesus’ appeal to “from the beginning of creation” would be an appeal to Sinai, which it is not.
Claim 8. Ezekiel 28 (Eden, precious stones) proves Eden is the mountain-sanctuary of Israel, not a primeval garden.
Vaughn’s counter. Prophetic Eden language is treated as the controlling context for Genesis.
Refutation. Ezekiel can apply Eden imagery to the king of Tyre or to Zion the way Isaiah 51:3 applies Eden to Zion’s restoration. Typological reuse is not a license to erase the source narrative in Genesis 2–3. The prophet assumes hearers know the garden story. If Ezekiel 28 rewrote Genesis, the precious stones of the high priest’s breastpiece would also prove that Exodus invented Eden rather than echoing it. The movement is garden first, sanctuary application later.
Claim 9. Ancient sites or long human history (for example Göbekli Tepe) require pre-Adamic humanity, so Adam cannot be first man.
Vaughn’s counter. Exegesis that ignores archaeology is said to be naive.
Refutation. That is a separate historical debate. It is not an exegesis of Genesis. This article asks what Moses, Jesus, and Paul claim. Extra-biblical chronology does not rewrite Genesis 2:5–7, Genesis 3:20, Genesis 5, or Acts 17:26. Even an old-earth or local-Flood model, both of which this article allows, still has to let Adam be the first man the text says he is. Archaeology does not supply the missing pre-Adamic race in Genesis 4.
Claim 10. Genesis 2:4 tôlĕdôt proves “heavens and earth” are people—the original formation of God’s covenant people.
Vaughn / Martin counter. “Look who is NOT cited.” Martin quoted the 2008 “Introduction to Covenant Creation” paragraph on generations and people.
Refutation. The 2008 paragraph is quoted in full in the next section. The formula names the source of the following history, not the identity of that source as a people. See the Genesis 2:4 discussion below. Quoting one 2008 paragraph does not demonstrate misrepresentation when the tôlĕdôt argument itself does not carry the weight assigned to it.
Claim 11. Later de-creation texts (Isaiah 51; 65–66; 2 Peter 3; Revelation 21) must be read back into Genesis so that Genesis is already the old covenant.
Vaughn’s counter. Consistency requires the same “heavens and earth” from Genesis to Revelation.
Refutation. That is the backward move this series rejects. Isaiah 51 and Revelation 21 apply creation language to covenant worlds. They do not unwrite Genesis 1. Consistency here means one redemptive-historical movement: physical archetype, covenantal application, spiritual fulfillment—not one ontological identity forced onto every occurrence of “heavens and earth.”
Physical Eden and the “Heavens and Earth” of Genesis 1–2
Tim Martin and Covenant Creation maintain that the “heavens and earth” of Genesis 1–2 are the old-covenant order (often read through temple architecture), while the Garden of Eden itself remains a literal physical place. This split is exegetically and logically untenable.
Genesis 2:4 explicitly links the garden account to the creation of the heavens and the earth: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” The physical details that follow—earth, ground, Adam formed from the ground, Eden, eastward location, rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, minerals, vegetation, animals—require a physical earth. If Martin grants a physical Eden, the question is: Physical Eden located where? If the answer is “on the physical earth,” then Genesis 2 itself identifies that physical earth with the “earth” belonging to the “heavens and earth” just introduced in Genesis 2:4.
A literal garden located on a physical earth cannot be detached exegetically from the “earth” of Genesis 2:4 without positive textual evidence that Moses has abruptly changed referents. Martin may reply that he never denied a physical cosmos, only that Genesis 1 describes its making. That reply does not meet the text in front of us. Genesis 2:4 names the heavens and the earth God made and immediately narrates ground, dust, a body, eastward location, rivers, and the Tigris and Euphrates. The burden is on Covenant Creation to show a change of referent inside that sentence, not to grant a physical garden while evacuating the earth that sentence has just identified.
Martin’s public reply to this article was not an exegesis of those material details. It was the complaint, “Look who is NOT cited in the entire article,” followed by a quotation from his and Jeff Vaughn’s 2008 essay “Introduction to Covenant Creation”:
“These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” Why is it that the “heavens and earth” involve generations? The form of this verse (“These are the generations of . . .”) is used throughout Genesis (e.g., 5:1; 6:9; 10:1, 32; 11:10). In every other instance where this form is used, the reference is to people. Genesis 2:4 references generations in conjunction with “heavens and earth” because the creation account speaks about the original formation of God’s people. Genesis creation is a symbolic statement, involving real people in real history, describing the “beginning” of God’s covenant world of friendship and relationship with His people.[1]
The quotation is now cited. It does not establish Covenant Creation’s reading. It actually reinforces the physical-to-covenantal movement this article defends.
Hebrew tôlĕdôt (from yālad, “to beget”) means “what is generated by,” “the account of what became of,” or “the history that proceeds from.” It is a heading that points forward to the progeny or developments that come from the named entity—not a statement that the named entity itself is a set of people. In every personal case (Adam, Noah, Shem, Terah, and the rest) it introduces the descendants or the narrative focused on what came from that person. Genesis 2:4 is the only non-personal instance. That uniqueness is the point; it is not proof that the unique case must secretly be personal in the same way as 5:1 or 6:9.
Victor Hamilton’s observation is the grammatical point. The tôlĕdôt formula is always followed by the genitive of the progenitor, never of the progeny. “The phrase the generations of the heavens and the earth describes not the process by which the heavens and the earth are generated, but rather that which is generated by the heavens and the earth.” Hamilton’s point is limited and sufficient. The genitive names the progenitor or source whose subsequent history the section narrates; it does not identify “heavens and earth” with the people who then appear. The analogy with Seth from Adam and Abram from Terah is structural, not a claim that dirt biologically “begets” Adam. What follows 2:4 is what proceeds from the heavens and earth God had made: the man from the ground, the garden, the rivers, the animals, Cain and Abel. That is enough to defeat Martin’s inference that tôlĕdôt turns those heavens and earth into covenant people.[2]
Gordon Wenham and Jason DeRouchie take the same structural side. Wenham treats 2:4 as the heading that opens the garden narrative rather than a subscript to 1:1–2:3, noting that it is anomalous for “This is the story of” to conclude a section when everywhere else in Genesis the formula introduces a major new development. DeRouchie argues that the tôlĕdôt formulae are transitional headings that point forward from progenitor to progeny, not colophons that look backward, and he reads 2:4–4:26 as the toledot of the heavens and the earth.[3]
Martin notes that the formula is used of people elsewhere and then assumes the unique case must also be about people in the same way. That is circular. The text itself signals the difference by placing the formula after the six-day creation (1:1–2:3) and immediately describing the formation of the first man from the ground of that earth. If the formula proved that “heavens and earth” equals God’s covenant people from the start, then the physical rivers, gold, bdellium, onyx, animals formed from the ground, and the man’s body of dust would all have to be re-symbolized away. Covenant Creation has historically done exactly that.
Genesis 2:4 therefore fits the controlling thesis of this series. The physical heavens and earth generate the human story that begins in a real garden with real rivers. Later Scripture can take that same creation language and apply it typologically to Israel’s covenant world without erasing the original material referent. Martin’s reading collapses the first stage into the second.
The language of Genesis 1 is material. Later prophetic applications of “heavens and earth” to Israel’s covenant order (Isaiah 51; 65–66) are typological developments, not redefinitions of the original referent. As demonstrated in Parts 1–2, the “heavens and earth” that pass away in the New Testament are the Mosaic order created at Sinai, not the physical cosmos of Genesis 1. Temple imagery is real—Eden prefigures the sanctuary—but the physical creation is the historical archetype and source of the imagery; the sanctuary is the copy.
Jesus, Paul, and Peter treat Genesis 1–2 as the beginning of the physical human race and the material world. Paul’s illustrations in 1 Corinthians 15:36–41 only carry force because they appeal to the ordinary, physical realities of the world God made. If those chapters were merely the symbolic charter of a non-physical old-covenant world, the analogies would lose their persuasive power.
The same pattern appears when Scripture later applies Eden language itself. Isaiah 51:3 declares that the Lord “makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord.” Joel 2:3 likewise uses Eden language in judgment and restoration of the land. In both cases the physical garden of Genesis supplies the imagery for a covenantal application to Israel. Revelation 21–22 then takes that same Eden imagery (tree of life, river of the water of life, God’s dwelling with His people, the removal of the curse) and applies it to the New Jerusalem—the Bride of the Lamb. The trajectory is:
physical Eden in Genesis →
typological/covenantal use for Zion and the land in Isaiah 51 and Joel →
spiritual fulfillment as the New-Covenant reality of being “in Christ” in Revelation 21–22.
Both the physical land of Eden and the physical Promised Land were typological of the true inheritance—not a return to a geographic plot of ground, but life in the presence of God through union with Christ. The antitype does not erase the physical reality of the original garden; it fulfills and transcends it.
The Bookends Argument
Martin claims the “bookends” of Genesis 1–3 and Revelation 21–22 must match ontologically: futurists want physical-to-physical; he wants spiritual-to-spiritual. Biblical typology repeatedly does not work that way. Physical temple → Christ and the Church. Physical sacrifice → Christ’s offering. Physical circumcision → circumcision of the heart. Physical Jerusalem → Jerusalem above. Physical land → inheritance in Christ. So physical Eden → New Jerusalem/Eden does not require either physical-to-physical or spiritual-to-spiritual identity. The antitype fulfills and transcends the type; it does not retroactively redefine the type’s mode of existence.
This is not a claim that every line of Scripture moves physical-to-spiritual. It is the pattern governing the types at issue here.
Major: A later spiritual antitype does not require its earlier historical type or archetype to exist in the same spiritual mode.
Minor: Revelation 21–22 spiritually fulfills imagery drawn from Eden and from the created order of Genesis 1–3.
Conclusion: Therefore the spiritual, New-Covenant character of Revelation 21–22 does not require Genesis 1–3 itself to describe a merely spiritual or covenantal creation.
The physical Eden of Genesis is later used spiritually in Revelation 21–22 without requiring us to deny that it was first a real, physical place. The same is true of the physical heavens and earth of Genesis 1.
Clarifying the Use of “create” or “Heavens and Earth” in Deuteronomy 32:6 LXX and Isaiah 51:15–16
Deuteronomy 32:6 LXX asks whether the Lord is not Israel’s Father who “made” and “created” them. Isaiah 51:15–16 says God who stirs up the sea has put His words in Zion’s mouth and covered her in the shadow of His hand, “to plant the heavens and to found the earth” and to say to Zion, “You are my people.” These texts describe the covenantal establishment of Israel—language of making, planting, founding—applied to a people already living on the physical earth God made in Genesis. They are the second stage of the pattern, not a warrant to erase the first. Sinai can be a covenantal “creation” of heavens and earth precisely because Genesis 1 already gave Israel the vocabulary of a real creation. Part 1 treated Isaiah 51 at length. The point here is only that covenantal reuse is not original-referent replacement.
The Adamic Order Distinguished from the Mosaic Covenant
Adam is not the Mosaic covenant. Death reigned from Adam to Moses (Romans 5:14). The law came 430 years after the promise (Galatians 3:17). The law entered that sin might increase (Romans 5:20). The Adamic order of Sin and Death is universal and prior. The Mosaic covenant is historically specific; the law enters alongside the Adamic problem so that the trespass increases and sin is exposed in Israel’s covenant history (Romans 5:20). Christ the last Adam resolves the Adamic problem. The Mosaic order is what is removed as a covenant world in AD 70. Conflating Adam with Sinai is how Covenant Creation turns Genesis 1–3 into the old covenant’s birth certificate. Distinguishing them is how Paul actually argues.
Major: Scripture distinguishes the Adamic reign of death from the later incoming of the Mosaic law.
Minor: What Hebrews and Revelation describe as passing away is the old covenant, its sanctuary, and its heavens and earth.
Conclusion: Genesis 1–3 is not thereby converted into the Mosaic covenant’s inauguration. Adam remains first man and first head of Sin and Death; Moses remains later.
Refuting Kenneth Gentry’s Partial-Preterist Double Eschatology
The same inconsistency that appears in Covenant Creation’s handling of Genesis reappears, in reverse form, in Kenneth Gentry’s partial preterism. Gentry correctly recognizes that Revelation 21:1 describes the metaphorical passing of the old-covenant order in AD 70. The problem becomes acute when we compare Revelation 21 with Peter’s closely related new-creation expectation, expressed in language substantially continuous with Isaiah 65–66.
Of Revelation 21 he writes:
“…what John means is that at first-century Jerusalem’s destruction the new covenant was finally and permanently established as the last vestiges of the old covenant were swept away. John’s language presents the metaphorical passing away of the first heaven and earth, as with his parallel images of the collapsing universe elsewhere (6:12–13; 8:12; cp. 21:23; 22:5).”[4]
And again:
“…the result of Israel’s AD 70 judgment: the securing of the new covenant church as a new order, a new creation. As noted earlier, Lightfoot (1654: 3:366) explains that Revelation 21:1 speaks of ‘the coming in of the gospel, when all things are made new; a new people, new ordinances, new economy, and the old world of Israel dissolved…’”[5]
On “no more death” (Revelation 21:4) Gentry affirms “the eternal life that comes in Christ’s new-covenant redemption, beginning in the first century.” On seeing God’s face (Revelation 22:4) he understands entering the presence of God in the new-covenant temple reality that began in the first century.[6]
On “no more sea”:
“The absence of the sea (21:1) speaks of the harmony and peace within. In Scripture the sea often symbolizes discord and sin… Christianity offers the opposite: peace with God and among humankind…”[7]
On Isaiah 65:
“Contrary to amillennialism, there is no ‘substantial evidence…for identifying [Isa. 65:17ff.] with the perfect eternal state.’ … The new heavens and new earth here (and many places elsewhere) refer to the new covenant era.”[8]
Then on 2 Peter 3 he writes the opposite:
“The destruction of the heavens and the earth that he envisions involves the current material creation. Hence, it refers to the distant consummation and not the approaching AD 70 conflagration, despite certain similarities between the two events (since one is the type of the other)… He is not contemplating the destruction of the old Jewish order in AD 70, but the material heavens and the earth at the second advent.”[9]
The issue is not whether prophetic imagery may have typological correspondences. It may. Gentry’s own reply is already in the quotation: AD 70 is “the type” of a later material consummation. That defense must be earned from Peter, not simply supplied by a theological commitment to a later physical consummation. The question is whether Peter himself signals that he has left Isaiah’s New-Covenant new creation and moved to a second, material-cosmic consummation. Shared vocabulary is not enough for Gentry, and it is not enough against him. The cumulative case is: language substantially continuous with Isaiah 65–66; the same new-creation hope John applies to AD 70 in Revelation 21; Peter’s imminent, scoffers-in-their-day setting (Part 2); Revelation’s recapitulated de-creation (6:14; 16:20; 20:11; 21:1); and the New Testament’s single imminent complex of Parousia, resurrection, judgment, end of the age, and new creation. Gentry must show why that complex splits. He has not shown it from Peter’s argument. He has posited a type/antitype relation because his system still needs a future physical passing of Genesis 1 after he has already given Isaiah 65 and Revelation 21 to the new-covenant era.
Gentry’s own marriage-and-feast reading of Revelation 19–21 cannot be isolated from the resurrection. Isaiah 25:6–9 places the eschatological banquet, the swallowing of death, and the wiping away of tears in one complex. Paul quotes that complex in 1 Corinthians 15:54 (“Death is swallowed up in victory”). Revelation 21:4 then repeats Isaiah’s “wipe away every tear” and “no more death” in the same new-creation vision Gentry assigns to AD 70. If the marriage supper of the Lamb and the passing of the first heaven and earth occur when the old-covenant wife is judged in AD 70—as The Divorce of Israel requires—then the death that is swallowed at that feast is swallowed then. That is the argument of Part 4 on 1 Corinthians 15. Gentry cannot keep the feast and the bride in the first century and still postpone Isaiah 25 / 1 Corinthians 15 to a second, physical consummation without splitting one prophetic banquet into two dinners.
Doug Wilson is even more explicit. In When the Man Comes Around:
“We are seeing here the transition between the first heaven (the Judaic aeon) and new earth (the Christian aeon). … I do not take the new heaven and new earth as referring to the post-Second Coming eternal state. … So, I take the first heavens and earth as the Judaic aeon and the new heavens and earth as the Christian aeon, and these two aeons overlapped—the latter beginning at Pentecost, and the former ending with the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D.”[10]
In “Biblical Pictures of the New Cosmos” he said Christ and the first-century church appeared “at the end of an age—the age of Judaic Temple worship, the aeon of the shadows,” followed by “the Christian aeon, in which we live.” The Temple of that new age “is a spiritual one and will never be torn down, much less rebuilt.”[11] Asked whether we are in the new heavens and new earth: “Yes. … I believe that you have to come to the conclusion that the new heavens and the new Earth have been inaugurated in the church age… I think in principle we are in the new heavens of the new Earth now.”[12]
These admissions are correct as far as they go. Partial preterism then reintroduces a second physical passing and arrival. Wilson can say the Judaic aeon ended in AD 70 and that we are in the new heavens now, and still reserve a later climax and general resurrection after “the Lord’s return.” Different labels do not turn one New Testament hope into two consummations.
Revelation 6 → 16 → 20 → 21: Linguistic Parallels and Recapitulation
What textual marker requires the reader to lift Revelation 20:11 out of the de-creation complex John has already used for the judgment of the old order? Lexical continuity, recapitulation of the same judgment from successive camera angles, and the shared Old Testament background do the work. Isolation of 20:11 is the claim that needs a marker. Gentry has already assigned 6, 16, and 21 to the first-century collapse of Israel’s world. He must justify the jump at 20:11.
Revelation 6:14: the sky vanished like a scroll; every mountain and island was removed from its place.
Revelation 16:20: every island fled, and no mountains were to be found.
Revelation 20:11: earth and heaven fled from the face of the One seated on the throne, and no place was found for them.
Revelation 21:1: the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
Gentry on 6:15–16:
“In 6:15–16 many ‘hid in caves’ and ‘called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us.”’ Josephus frequently mentions that the Jews actually sought refuge underground during the AD 67–70 war…”[13]
On the sixth seal: the de-creation language portrays Israel’s world coming apart under the wrath of the Lamb—common prophetic parlance for the collapse of God-cursed governments (Ezekiel 32; Isaiah 34; Jeremiah 4).[14]
On 16:20: since the bowls are poured on “the Land,” the removal of islands and mountains indicates the overthrow of Israel’s cities, small and large, near and far.[15]
Keith Mathison and others in the same partial-preterist orbit have likewise taken the sixth seal as AD 70. G. K. Beale notes the parallelism of fleeing mountains/islands and heaven/earth removed across these visions. If 6, 16, and 21 are the covenantal collapse of Israel’s world, 20:11 uses the same flight language and the same “no place found” as the other de-creation scenes. Recapitulation is John’s method. A future physical annihilation of Genesis 1 is not marked in the text at 20:11.
| Passage | Partial Preterist Interpretation |
| Matthew 5:17–18 | Old Covenant heaven and earth passed in AD 70 |
| Matthew 24:3, 29, 35 | Old Covenant heaven and earth passed in AD 70 |
| Acts 2:20–21 | Old Covenant world passed in AD 70 |
| Romans 8:18–23 (YLT) | Creation of men groaning; liberation “about to be” in AD 70 (Lightfoot, DeMar) |
| 1 Corinthians 7:29–31 | Old Covenant world passed in AD 70 |
| 2 Peter 3 | Old Covenant heaven and earth passed in AD 70 |
| Hebrews 1:10–12; 12:26–28 | Old Covenant heaven and earth passed in AD 70 (Isker & Webbon) |
| 1 John 2:17–18 | Old Covenant world passed in AD 70 |
| Revelation 6:14–17 | Old Covenant world passed in AD 70 |
| Revelation 16:20 | Old Covenant world passed in AD 70 |
| Revelation 21:1 | Old Covenant heaven and earth passed in AD 70 |
These interpretations, while individually considered “orthodox,” show how Full Preterism synthesizes the same texts into one reading. How likely is it that there is only one physical de-creation of the universe while all the others refer to the old-covenant world?
One consummation versus two
The New Testament does not warrant turning a single complex into two consummations merely by assigning different labels to the same coming, judgment, resurrection, and new creation.
| Item | Full Preterism | Partial-preterist division |
| Coming of Christ | One consummative Parousia, AD 70 | AD 70 judicial coming + future Second Advent |
| Judgment | One consummative judgment | AD 70 covenant judgment + future universal judgment |
| Resurrection | One resurrection complex (Isa. 25 / 1 Cor. 15 / Rev. 21), AD 70 | AD 70 covenantal motifs + future bodily resurrection |
| Heavens and earth pass | One passing: old-covenant world | Rev. 21 now (covenantal) + 2 Pet. 3 later (material cosmos) |
| Marriage supper / Isa. 25 banquet | One banquet when death is swallowed, AD 70 | Feast and “no more death” in Rev. 21 now; 1 Cor. 15 postponed |
The same split appears when the three bookends are set side by side. Futurism keeps Genesis physical and then demands a second physical consummation at the end. Covenant Creation keeps Revelation spiritual and then reads that spirituality back into Genesis. Partial preterism grants the spiritual new creation in Revelation 21 and then adds another physical consummation afterward. Full Preterism is the only reading that lets each bookend keep its own place:
| System | Genesis 1–3 | Sinai / Prophets | Revelation 21–22 | Problem |
| Futurism | Physical creation | Covenant types | Future physical re-creation | Makes the fulfillment return to the physical |
| Covenant Creation | Covenant / spiritual creation | Covenant development | Spiritual New Creation | Pushes the spiritual meaning backward into Genesis |
| Full Preterism defended here | Physical historical creation | Covenantal / typological application | Spiritual New-Covenant fulfillment | Preserves archetype → type → fulfillment |
| Partial Preterism (Gentry) | Physical creation | Covenant application | AD 70 spiritual New Creation plus a future physical consummation | Adds another consummation after the fulfillment the text does not mention |
The Marriage, Divorce, and Creation of the Covenant Heavens and Earth in AD 70
Gentry recognizes that the marriage of God to Israel, the Mosaic old-covenant “heavens and earth,” and her judgment/divorce stand together. That recognition is now the title and controlling thesis of The Divorce of Israel (2024). Revelation is a forensic drama in which God divorces his old-covenant wife so that he can take a new wife. The seven-sealed scroll functions as the divorce decree. Babylon is first-century Jerusalem. After the capital punishment of the adulterous wife and thus her divorce and passing of her heavens and earth, the New Jerusalem-bride replaces her. “The new creation is an image of the new covenant and wife.”[16]
The biblical complex in which covenant formation, marriage, covenantal heavens-and-earth imagery, later divorce and judgment, and the fall of the unfaithful city converge is the Mosaic-Israelite order—not Genesis 1. Sinai constitutes Israel as Yahweh’s people and wife. Isaiah 51 can describe that covenantal establishment with creation language. Revelation depicts the termination of the old wife and the arrival of the New Jerusalem bride together with the passing of the first heaven and earth. Genesis 1:1 contains no marriage, no city-wife, and no divorce. If Gentry’s decree, capital sentence, feast, and new bride belong to AD 70, the new creation that attends them belongs there as well—and with them Isaiah 25:6–9 and 1 Corinthians 15. Doug Wilson affirms the new covenant new heavens and new earth arrived in AD 70 but tries to avoid this was the time of the wedding and feast because he sees the resurrection of the dead and swallowing up of death train coming of Isaiah 25 and 1 Corinthians 15. You can see why both men have declined to debate myself or Don Preston.
Martin admits that God married old-covenant Israel at Sinai (Exodus 19–24). He refuses to acknowledge that this is also when God “formed” or “created” Israel’s covenant heavens and earth (Deuteronomy 32:6 LXX; Isaiah 51:9–16). That refusal is the backward collapse of the pattern.
THE BIBLICAL MOVEMENT
Physical Creation → Covenant Application → Spiritual Fulfillment in Christ
The Problem From Both Directions
Martin’s error moves backward: he sees the spiritual New-Covenant fulfillment in Revelation 21–22 and projects that covenantal/spiritual meaning backward into Genesis 1–3. Gentry’s error moves forward: he correctly sees the spiritual New-Covenant fulfillment in Revelation 21 but then projects another physical consummation forward beyond it. Wilson’s published reading of Revelation 21 / 2 Peter 3 / Isaiah 65 as the Judaic-to-Christian aeon in AD 70 makes Gentry’s split even harder to defend. Covenant Creation collapses the archetype into the antitype; Partial Preterism adds another physical fulfillment after the antitype.
The Facebook replies illustrate the same backward move. Vaughn treats later covenantal uses of creation language as if they redefine Genesis. Martin treats the unique tôlĕdôt of the heavens and the earth as if it proved those heavens and earth were already “God’s people.” Both collapse the first stage into the second.
Conclusion
The “first covenant man only” reading and the related spiritualizing of Genesis 1–2 require inserting unstated populations, limiting clear universal statements, reversing the plain sense of the Adam–Christ parallel, and creating an incoherent split between a physical garden and a non-physical “heavens and earth” in Genesis 2:4. None of these moves is necessary. Genesis 1–5, the genealogies, Romans 5, and 1 Corinthians 15 present Adam as the first man—biological and federal head of the entire human race—placed by God in a real garden on a real earth that God had made.
The physical creation carries typological significance from the first day; it is never reduced to a merely spiritual or Israel-only construct.
The “heavens and earth” that pass away are the old-covenant Mosaic order. The natural body of Sin and Death—the Adamic order intensified by that Mosaic Law—was buried and raised into the spiritual body of Christ when the Old Covenant order passed away in AD 70 (Part 4). The historical Adam of Genesis remains the necessary type; the last Adam is the greater antitype.
Gentry has said in print that Revelation 21 is the metaphorical passing of the first heaven and earth at Jerusalem’s destruction, that “no more death” and “no more sea” describe new-covenant realities beginning in the first century, and that Isaiah 65 is the new-covenant era. He has said in print that 2 Peter 3 is the material cosmos at a distant second advent. Wilson has said in print that the first heaven is the Judaic aeon, the new heaven the Christian aeon, that the two overlapped until AD 70, and that we are in principle in the new heavens now. Gentry cannot keep the AD 70 marriage supper and “no more death” of Revelation 21 and still treat Isaiah 25:6–9 / 1 Corinthians 15 as a second marriage or banquet at the end of material history. Part 4 already joined those texts. The linguistic continuity across Revelation 6:14, 16:20, 20:11, and 21:1, together with the marriage/divorce motif Gentry now organizes a commentary around, makes the isolation of Revelation 20:11 and 2 Peter 3 exegetically untenable.
Full Preterism alone remains consistent with the single, imminent, consummative eschatology of the New Testament and with the physical-to-spiritual movement from Genesis to Revelation: physical creation and Eden as historical archetype → covenantal typological application at Sinai and in the prophets → spiritual New-Covenant fulfillment in Christ.
[1] Tim Martin and Jeff Vaughn, “Introduction to Covenant Creation,” Fulfilled! Magazine (Winter 2008); also at https://beyondcreationscience.com/Introduction_to_Covenant_Creation.php.
[2] Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), on Genesis 2:4.
[3] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, WBC (Waco: Word, 1987); Jason S. DeRouchie, “The Blessing-Commission, the Promised Offspring, and the Toledot Structure of Genesis,” JETS 56.2 (2013): 219–47.
[4] Kenneth L. Gentry Jr., The Divorce of Israel: A Redemptive-Historical Interpretation of Revelation, 2 vols. (Tolle Lege Press / Chalcedon Foundation, 2024), 2:1624.
[5] Gentry, Divorce of Israel, 2:1625, citing John Lightfoot, Works (1654), 3:366.
[6] Gentry, Divorce of Israel, on Revelation 21:4 and 22:4.
[7] Kenneth L. Gentry Jr., in C. Marvin Pate, ed., Four Views on the Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 89.
[8] Kenneth L. Gentry Jr., He Shall Have Dominion, 3rd ed. (Covenant Media Press, 2009), 367–68.
[9] Kenneth L. Gentry Jr., “2 Peter 3 and the Consummation (2),” Postmillennial Worldview.
[10] Douglas Wilson, When the Man Comes Around (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2019), 245–46.
[11] Douglas Wilson, “Biblical Pictures of the New Cosmos,” in And It Came to Pass (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1993).
[12] Douglas Wilson, “Ask Doug: Are we in the new heavens?” Canon Press, June 4, 2010.
[13] Gentry on Revelation 6:15–16, citing Josephus, Wars 3.7.36 and related passages. Verify commentary page.
[14] Gentry on Revelation 6:12–17 (cf. Ezek. 32; Isa. 34; Jer. 4).
[15] Gentry on Revelation 16:20, citing Josephus, J.W. 3.7.1 §134; 4.9.9 §§545–555.
[16] Gentry, Divorce of Israel, on Revelation 21 as the image of the new covenant.