Eschatology has been the most speculative and the most abused corner of systematic theology. Charts, dispensations, tribulations, raptures, antichrists, numbers. What follows applies the sentence to the last things and lets the smoke clear. Some of these derivations correct long-standing errors. Some acknowledge the framework’s own limits. Both kinds matter.
“Everything that exists is a thought in the mind of God, sustained by His will, authored by His purpose, and held together by personal covenants of love.”
Chapter 27 rejects dispensational premillennialism and traces its modern form to John Nelson Darby in the 1830s. But the error is older than Darby. Much older. Bob Higby demonstrated that dispensationalism in its original form was a first-century Jewish Christian heresy — and the apostles themselves rejected it in their own writings.
The original eleven apostles initially held a two-peoples theology. They believed God would maintain a distinct Jewish elect community committed to the law alongside Gentile believers saved through faith. They expected a literal restoration of the kingdom to Israel. “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Jesus did not confirm their expectation. He redirected them: “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power” (Acts 1:7). And then He sent them to the nations.
But the expectation persisted. James’s party in Jerusalem taught that Jewish believers remained under the law while Gentiles were saved by grace alone. Two peoples. Two programs. Two destinies. This is dispensationalism — not in its nineteenth-century prophetic chart form, but in its theological DNA. The distinction between Israel and the church as two separate programs of God originated in Acts 15, not in Plymouth Brethren.
The Jerusalem council failed to fully condemn the radical Judaizers, and the heresy spread. But the apostles themselves abandoned it as the Spirit increased the resolution (Chapter 9). Peter ate with Gentiles (Acts 10). Paul confronted Peter when he withdrew from them (Galatians 2:11-14). And Paul’s mature theology demolished the two-peoples framework entirely: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:28-29).
The apostles themselves rejected dispensationalism. They held it early, corrected it progressively, and abandoned it in their later writings. Modern dispensationalism is a resurrection of what the apostles left behind. And the framework’s rejection of it in Chapter 27 is not a novel position. It is the apostolic position, recovered.
For further study: Acts 1:6-8; Acts 10:34-35; Acts 11:17-18; Acts 15:1-29; Rom. 2:28-29; Rom. 4:11-12; Rom. 9:6-8; Rom. 11:17-24; Gal. 2:11-14; Gal. 3:7-9; Gal. 3:16; Gal. 3:28-29; Gal. 6:16; Eph. 2:11-16; Eph. 3:6; Phil. 3:3; Heb. 8:8-13; 1 Pet. 2:9-10.
Full preterism teaches that all biblical prophecy, including the resurrection of the dead, was fulfilled by AD 70. No future resurrection. No future return of Christ. No new bodies. No new earth. Everything has already happened. And Paul called this exact position cancer.
“But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.” (2 Timothy 2:16-18)
Paul didn’t call this a minor doctrinal difference. He called it cancer. He named the men by name. And their error was specific: saying the resurrection is past already. That is full preterism. The exact same claim, the exact same error, identified by the apostle Paul as soul-destroying.
The framework makes this even sharper. Chapter 29 establishes that the resurrection body is physical — more physical, not less. Christ ate broiled fish (Luke 24:42-43). Thomas touched His wounds (John 20:27). He had flesh and bones and said so: “Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39). The resurrection body is not a metaphor. It’s not a spiritual concept. It’s a physical body with the rendering constraints removed.
If the resurrection has already occurred, where are the new bodies? We still sin. We still get sick. We still die. The rendering clearly hasn’t upgraded. The firmware is still running both codes (Chapter 16). The groaning hasn’t stopped. Romans 8:23 is explicit:
“And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” (Romans 8:23)
WAITING. Present tense. For the redemption of our BODY. Not our soul — our body. Paul wrote this decades after the cross. He was still waiting. If the resurrection had already occurred, Paul was either confused or lying. And Paul wasn’t confused.
“Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). SHALL change. Future. Our vile body — the one we currently occupy — will be fashioned like His glorious body. That hasn’t happened. Look at your body. It’s aging, decaying, and heading for the ground. If that’s the resurrection body, the Author has some explaining to do.
Full preterism is Gnosticism in sovereign grace clothing. The Gnostics spiritualized the resurrection because they despised the physical. Full preterists do the same thing — they take every physical promise in Scripture and make it metaphorical. No new earth. No new body. No return of Christ. Just “spiritual” fulfillment that leaves the world exactly as it is — full of death, sin, and suffering, forever.
And Paul said their word eats like cancer. I preached a full sermon on this in September 2020 from 2 Timothy 2:14-18 and Romans 8:18-39. I have personally encountered people who hold this position within the sovereign grace world. They mockingly call those of us who believe in a future resurrection “futurists.” And they claim to have a more spiritual understanding of Scripture. But what they actually have is the error of Hymenaeus and Philetus, which Paul identified by name and condemned as cancerous.
The framework is partial preterist (Chapter 27). Much was fulfilled in AD 70. But the physical resurrection, the return of Christ, and the new creation are future. The rendering hasn’t upgraded yet. We’re still groaning. And the groaning has a terminus — but that terminus is ahead of us, not behind.
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” (1 Corinthians 15:19)
For further study: Job 19:25-27; Isa. 26:19; Dan. 12:2; Matt. 22:29-32; John 5:28-29; John 6:40; John 11:25-26; Acts 24:15; 1 Cor. 15:3-8; 1 Cor. 15:20-28; 1 Cor. 15:35-49; 1 Cor. 15:50-57; Phil. 3:20-21; 1 Thess. 4:13-18; Rev. 20:4-6; Rev. 21:1-5.
The rapture as taught in popular dispensationalism — a secret snatching of believers before a seven-year tribulation — has no support in this framework.
“Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
This is the second coming. Not a separate, secret event preceding the second coming. There is one return of Christ, visible, glorious, and final. The “caught up” is the rendering upgrade at the end of the age — the living saints transformed and the dead saints raised, all at once, all together, at the last trumpet.
“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).
At the last trump. The trumpet of the one return. There is no earlier, secret trumpet. There is no two-stage return. There is one Christ, one coming, one trumpet, one rendering upgrade.
For further study: Matt. 24:29-31; Matt. 24:40-41; Mark 13:24-27; John 6:39-40; John 6:44; John 6:54; John 11:24; 2 Thess. 1:7-10; 2 Thess. 2:1-3; 2 Pet. 3:10-13; Rev. 1:7.
Chapter 27 establishes the amillennial, partial preterist, historicist position. Most of what dispensationalism assigns to a future seven-year tribulation has already been fulfilled. The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 fulfilled Matthew 24. The “abomination of desolation” was the Roman armies surrounding the temple. The “great tribulation” was the siege and destruction that killed over a million people.
The antichrist is not a single future figure. “Even now are there many antichrists” (1 John 2:18). John said “many” and “even now.” The spirit of antichrist has been present in every age. The papacy, the state churches, the false teachers, the theological systems that deny the sovereignty of God in salvation — all of these are antichrist in the biblical sense.
Will there be a final, climactic manifestation of evil before Christ returns? Possibly. The framework holds eschatological timing with open hands (Chapter 27). But the framework doesn’t require a single future antichrist. It requires only what Scripture requires: many antichrists, a final return of Christ, and the rendering upgrade that resolves everything.
For further study: Dan. 7:25; Dan. 9:26-27; Dan. 11:31; Matt. 24:4-28; Mark 13:5-23; Luke 21:20-24; 2 Thess. 2:3-12; 1 John 2:22; 1 John 4:3; 2 John 7; Rev. 13:1-18; Rev. 17:8-14.
“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first.” (2 Thessalonians 2:3)
The great apostasy is not a future event on a prophecy chart. It began in the first century. Paul saw it. John named it. And the church has been living in it ever since.
Paul told Timothy: “This thou knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me” (2 Timothy 1:15). All of them. In Asia. Turned away. Not from Christ in the abstract — from Paul, from the gospel he preached, from the doctrine of sovereign grace that he spent his life proclaiming. The apostasy was already underway before Paul died.
John confirmed it: “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time” (1 John 2:18). Even NOW. Many antichrists. Not one future figure. Many. Already present. Already working. The “last time” began in the first century and has been running for two thousand years.
In the historicist framework (Chapter 27), the great apostasy is not a sudden event at the end of history. It is a progressive degradation of the rendering — the truth getting harder to find, the gospel getting diluted, the church drifting from the simplicity of grace into works, offers, duty faith, and institutional religion. Every century adds another layer of Plato’s law (Chapter 1). Every generation builds a new Babel (see above). The sovereign grace theology that the Teacher of Righteousness wrote down in 200 BC (Appendix F) and that Paul preached in the first century has been buried, recovered, buried again, recovered again, and buried again — for two millennia.
The apostasy is not coming. The apostasy is here. It has been here since Asia turned away from Paul. And the elect in every generation have been the remnant who held the truth while the institutions abandoned it. “Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace” (Romans 11:5). A remnant. Not a majority. Not an institution. Not a denomination. A remnant. And the remnant is always small, always scattered, always accused of being heretics by the system they refused to join.
The Author wrote the apostasy into the story. He also wrote the remnant. And the remnant always outlasts the system.
For further study: Matt. 24:4-5; Matt. 24:10-12; Matt. 24:24; Acts 20:29-30; 1 Tim. 4:1-3; 2 Tim. 3:1-5; 2 Tim. 3:13; 2 Tim. 4:3-4; 2 Pet. 2:1-3; 2 Pet. 3:3-4; Jude 3-4; Jude 17-19; Rev. 2:4-5; Rev. 3:14-17.
“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” (Revelation 13:18)
The number is 666. And the key to understanding it is in the text itself: it is the number of a man. Not the number of a god. Not the number of a supernatural being. The number of a man.
In Scripture, seven is the number of divine completion. God rested on the seventh day. The seven Spirits before the throne. The seven churches. The seven seals. Seven is God’s number. Six falls short. And 666 is six tripled — man at his highest achievement, repeated three times, and still falling short of divine perfection. The beast is the pinnacle of human power, human religion, and human control. And it is not enough. It never reaches seven. It never reaches God. The tower of Babel, rebuilt in every generation, and never reaching heaven.
In the historicist framework (Chapter 27), the beast is not one future individual with a barcode on his forehead. The beast is a pattern. It is the recurring system that centralizes political power, religious authority, and economic control under a human head, claiming for itself what belongs to God alone. Nero’s name in Hebrew gematria equals 666. The papacy claimed the title Vicarius Filii Dei — “Vicar of the Son of God” — whose Roman numerals sum to 666. Every empire that has demanded worship of its leader, every religious system that has placed a man between God and His people, every economic structure that has required compliance with a human authority in exchange for the right to “buy or sell” (Revelation 13:17) — all of them are the beast. The number identifies the pattern. The pattern keeps repeating because the Author wrote it to repeat until the final rendering.
In the framework: the beast is a thought in the mind of God. Authored. Decreed. Serving a purpose. The beast exists because the contrast is necessary. The human system that claims to be God is the backdrop against which the real God is seen most clearly. The tower that never reaches heaven proves that heaven cannot be reached by human effort. And the number — 666 — is the signature of every attempt. Man. Man. Man. Never God.
The mark of the beast is not a future technology. It is the allegiance. The willingness to submit to a human system in exchange for participation in the world’s economy and culture. And in every age, the saints have refused the mark — not because they knew its number, but because they knew their King. And their King is not a man. Their King is God. And His number is seven.
For further study: Dan. 3:1-6; Dan. 3:18; Dan. 7:25; Dan. 11:36-37; Matt. 24:24; 2 Thess. 2:3-4; 2 Thess. 2:9-12; 1 John 2:18; 1 John 4:3; Rev. 13:1-18; Rev. 14:9-11; Rev. 15:2; Rev. 17:9-14; Rev. 19:19-20; Rev. 20:4.
“And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.” (Revelation 20:2-3)
In the amillennial framework (Chapter 27), the thousand years is the current church age. Not literal. Symbolic. The “binding” is not Satan being inactive — he still prowls like a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8). The binding is a rendering constraint on his ability to deceive the nations at the global scale. During the church age, the gospel goes out to the nations. Satan can harass, tempt, accuse, and attack individuals. But he cannot stop the elect from being gathered. The rendering parameters limit his reach.
The “loosing for a little season” is God removing that constraint at the end of the age. The Author lifts the rendering parameter that was limiting Satan’s influence. Deception increases. The nations gather against God’s people. Apostasy spreads. The truth gets harder to find.
“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle.” (Revelation 20:7-8)
The loosing is short — “a little season” compared to the binding. It is a final rendering degradation before the final rendering upgrade. One last drop in resolution before the full resolution arrives.
After the loosing: “And fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Revelation 20:9-10). The loosing ends. The quarantine becomes permanent. The rendering upgrades. And the three groups of self-conscious beings in the final creation (Chapter 12) — elect angels, elect humans, reprobate — interact in the new reality. The demons are quarantined. They do not interact. The system runs clean.
For further study: Gen. 3:15; Isa. 24:21-22; Matt. 12:29; Mark 3:27; Luke 10:18; John 12:31; John 16:11; Col. 2:15; Heb. 2:14; 1 John 3:8; Rev. 12:7-12; Rev. 20:1-3; Rev. 20:7-10; Rev. 20:14-15.
Christ will return. Visibly. Physically. Finally.
“This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). In like manner. Visible. Physical. Recognizable. The same Jesus.
When He returns, the rendering engine upgrades. The dead are raised. The living are transformed. The full resolution rendering begins. Heaven and hell become the same reality experienced through different firmware (Chapter 28). The saints reign. Every knee bows. The thought is rendered at full resolution for the first time.
The timing is unknown. “But of that day and hour knoweth no man” (Matthew 24:36). Every prediction has been wrong. Every date-setter has been humiliated. The framework doesn’t try to set dates. It derives the nature of what happens when He returns, not the when.
For further study: Zech. 14:4-5; Dan. 7:13-14; Matt. 16:27; Matt. 25:31-32; Mark 13:26-27; Luke 21:27; John 14:3; Phil. 3:20-21; Col. 3:4; 1 Thess. 5:1-3; 2 Thess. 1:7-10; Titus 2:13; Heb. 9:28; Rev. 1:7; Rev. 22:12; Rev. 22:20.
The church has had a small heaven for a very long time, and the smallness has come from the same source most of its other small ideas have come from. The law of Plato in the floorboards. If the spiritual is higher than the embodied, and the embodied is lower, then the eternal state must dispose of the embodied and leave only the spiritual. Therefore heaven is disembodied choir, perpetual throne-worship, the saints as mouths-with-no-bodies attached forever. That is not what Scripture describes. The framework can do better.
The throne-worship is real and the framework affirms it without qualification. Revelation 4 and 5 describe the saints falling down before the Lamb. “And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (Revelation 5:9). The Lamb is the focal point of glory. The worship is direct, joyful, undivided. Anything the framework says about the larger heaven cannot reduce or distract from this. The Lamb is the center.
But Revelation 4 and 5 are not the entire description of the eternal state. Revelation 19 brings the marriage supper of the Lamb. Revelation 20 shows the saints reigning. Revelation 21 shows the new Jerusalem with nations walking in its light, kings bringing their glory in, the river of life flowing, the tree of life bearing fruit every month with leaves for the healing of the nations. Isaiah 25 promises a feast of fat things and wines on the lees. Isaiah 65 promises building houses and planting vineyards and eating the fruit of them. Luke 22 has Christ Himself promising to drink wine new in the kingdom. The Bible’s eschatology is bigger than the throne. It includes the throne and it includes everything around the throne. Both at once.
Here is the integrating move the framework requires. There is no neutral activity in the new creation. There is no division between “spiritual” worship and “embodied” everything-else. The framework refused that division from Chapter 1 and it refuses it again here. In glory, the eating IS worship. The reigning IS worship. The intimacy with the spouse the covenant of love bound to you forever IS worship. The work of the saints IS worship. The seeing-each-other-fully IS worship.
This is not a stretch. It is the only consistent application of the body-is-good ontology the framework has held throughout. If the body is good (Chapter 29), if the rendering is upgraded not discarded, if the curse is removed and the appetites the Author designed are satisfied at full resolution, then everything the saint does in glory is done before the Lamb and is itself an act of worship. The Lamb is not relegated to a corner where worship happens. The Lamb is everywhere in the new creation, and everything done there is done in His presence. “And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him” (Revelation 22:3). Serve. The verb means active doing. The throne is in the city. The serving is the city’s life.
This is the part the church has rarely said out loud, and the framework has to say it because Scripture says it. God enjoys the saints’ enjoyment. The Father designed the bodies, designed the appetites, designed the marriage bed and the feast and the friendships and the work and the wine. He designed the satisfaction the bodies and appetites would have when they were used as designed. And He delights in their use. “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Psalm 16:11). Pleasures. For evermore. At His right hand. The Father is the source of the pleasures. Not their reluctant permitter. Their author and their delight.
The Father is not reluctantly tolerating the saints’ enjoyment of the new creation while the real action happens at the throne. He authored the new creation specifically so the saints could enjoy it specifically so He could delight in their delight. The whole arc of redemption ends not in disembodied choir but in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit watching the saints LIVE the upgraded life He designed for them, and rejoicing over them. “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17). He sings over them. He rests in His love for them. He rejoices over them with joy. This is the divine delight in the saints’ enjoyment of the rendering He authored for them.
Bob Higby’s story (Appendix L) saw all of this before the framework had the vocabulary for it. The feast scene Jim ridiculed in Bob’s narrative is the framework’s heaven. The guests joyfully consuming fatty meat and fermented wine, all tears removed from their faces in the day of glorification (Isaiah 25:6-8), conversing about the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The throne-worship is implicit. The living is explicit. Both happening at once. Bob saw what the smaller eschatologies could not see. He did not flinch. The framework owes him for the vision.
The reduction of heaven to throne-worship-only came from the same place every other reduction in this book came from. The law of Plato. If the body is lesser, the body’s eternal use is suspect. If the embodied is lower than the spiritual, the eternal state must privilege the spiritual to the exclusion of the embodied. Augustine inherited it. The medieval church baptized it. The Reformers kept the eschatology even while reforming the soteriology. And by the time of modern evangelical preaching, “heaven” had been reduced to a perpetual choir loft with all the world’s good things stripped out.
That is a small heaven. It is not Scripture’s heaven. And the cost of the reduction has been enormous. Generations of believers have wondered why they were supposed to long for a place that sounded like an indefinite worship service. They were right to wonder. The place they had been told to long for was not the place Scripture described.
The framework can derive the SHAPE of the larger heaven. Scripture indicates a feast, a city, reigning, knowing, building, planting, wine, the bridegroom and the bride, the throne and the Lamb at the center of it all. What the framework cannot derive is the specific contents beyond what Scripture names. Will the saints play instruments? Probably yes, given that music is part of the Bible’s eschatological imagery. Will they write poetry? Will they explore the new creation geographically? Will they cultivate things that have never existed before? The framework does not know. “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). The shape is derivable. The contents exceed the firmware’s current capacity to imagine. Hold the shape. Trust the contents to the Author.
If you have been taught a small heaven and never longed for it, the framework says you were right to wonder. The place you were promised was not the place Scripture described. The actual heaven includes the throne AND the feast AND the bodies AND the intimacy AND the work AND the wine AND the seeing-each-other-fully. All of it. Forever. Authored by a Father who delights in your delight in what He made.
The Lamb is the center. The throne is the focal point. And around the throne and through the throne and from the throne the entire new creation is alive at full resolution, and everything good the Author authored in the original creation is back, restored, upgraded, with the curse off and the rendering at full fidelity. Living IS worship. Worship IS living. There was never a difference. Plato made the difference up. The framework refuses to keep his rule.
LIVING and ENJOYING the life the Lord has given. That is heaven. The Lamb authored it. The Father delights in it. The Spirit empowers it. And the saints will live inside it forever, knowing each other, knowing Him, doing the things bodies were designed to do at the resolution they were always meant to do them at.
Sweet. Intimate. Unashamed. Precious. The throne. The feast. The bed. The friends. The work. The wine. The eye contact that never breaks again.
That is the larger heaven. Long for it. And rest in the Author who wrote every frame and is waiting at the gate.
For further study: Ps. 16:11; Ps. 36:8; Ps. 84:10; Isa. 25:6-9; Isa. 35:10; Isa. 65:17-25; Zeph. 3:17; Matt. 8:11; Matt. 26:29; Luke 22:18; Luke 22:30; John 14:1-3; Rom. 8:18-21; 1 Cor. 2:9; 1 Cor. 15:42-44; 1 Cor. 15:51-57; Eph. 1:10; Phil. 3:20-21; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 4:1-11; Rev. 5:8-14; Rev. 7:9-17; Rev. 19:1-9; Rev. 21:1-7; Rev. 21:22-27; Rev. 22:1-5.
The marital sexuality section sits in the eschatology because the bed is a preview, not just an ethic. The one-flesh union of husband and wife is the temporal rendering of the eternal union between Christ and His bride (Ephesians 5:31-32, Revelation 19:7-9). What the body does in covenant now previews what the saints will experience at the wedding supper of the Lamb in the higher resolution rendering (Chapter 29). Hebrews 13:4 grounds the present-tense permission. Eschatology grounds why the permission was given at all. The framework treats the marriage bed not as a permission slip but as a window onto the final state.
The church has historically treated sex as a concession, something tolerated within marriage but never celebrated. This is the law of Plato applied to the body. If the spirit is higher than the flesh (Plato), then sexual union is a lesser activity, permitted but not honored. The framework rejects this entirely.
In Chapter 10, we established that the physical union between husband and wife IS the theological statement about Christ and the church. “The two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:31-32). Paul calls it a mystery, the physical and the spiritual are one thing, not two. The body is not lesser than the soul. The union is not lesser than the worship. The Song of Solomon is not an embarrassment tucked into the canon by accident. It is God’s celebration of what He designed.
If everything that exists is a thought in the mind of God, then sexual union within marriage is a thought God is actively thinking. He designed the bodies. He designed the pleasure. He designed the vulnerability, the tenderness, the loss of control, the moment when the glass comes down and two people stand in the same space with nothing between them. That is not a concession. That is a sacrament without a priest.
“Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4). The bed is undefiled. Not merely permitted. Not grudgingly tolerated. Undefiled. Clean. Holy. The writer of Hebrews does not qualify this statement. He does not add “within certain boundaries” or “for procreation only.” The bed is undefiled. Period.
The Song of Solomon celebrates oral intimacy explicitly, and the church has spent centuries pretending it doesn’t. Let the text speak for itself.
The beloved (the woman) describes her desire for her husband: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine” (Song of Solomon 1:2). This is not a peck on the cheek. This is a woman asking for the fullness of her husband’s mouth. And she wants it more than wine.
She continues: “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste” (Song of Solomon 2:3). His fruit. Sweet to her taste. The imagery is unmistakable. She is describing oral intimacy and she is describing it with delight, not shame.
The husband responds in kind. “Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue” (Song of Solomon 4:11). Under her tongue. Honey and milk. The man is describing the sweetness of his wife’s mouth on his body, and God put this verse in the Bible.
Then the invitation: “Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits” (Song of Solomon 4:16). She calls her body a garden. She invites him to eat. This is not metaphor that accidentally sounds sexual. This is sexual language deliberately chosen by the Holy Spirit to describe what the marriage bed looks like when the glass comes down.
And God’s response to all of it: “I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved” (Song of Solomon 5:1). The voice in this verse is God’s. The church fathers recognized it as such. And God says eat. Drink abundantly. He does not say “enough.” He does not say “be careful.” He says drink abundantly. God is celebrating what the couple just did. And He is inviting all married lovers to do the same.
The husband describes his wife’s body: “Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies” (Song of Solomon 7:2). The word translated “navel” may refer to her lower anatomy. Scholars have debated this, but the surrounding language leaves little room for sanitizing it. He is admiring her body from her thighs upward, slowly, worshipfully.
And then: “I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples; And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine” (Song of Solomon 7:8-9). He climbs the palm tree. He takes hold. Her breasts are like clusters. And the roof of her mouth is like the best wine. This is a man describing the full range of physical intimacy with his wife, including her mouth on his body, and God chose to preserve every word of it in holy Scripture.
This is what God celebrates. Not tolerates. Celebrates. The church that teaches shame about oral intimacy within marriage is teaching against the Song of Solomon. The pastor who won’t address this topic from the pulpit is refusing to preach a book that God put in the canon. And the young couple who enters marriage believing that certain acts of love are “dirty” has been catechized by Plato, not by the Holy Spirit.
God is not embarrassed by sex. He designed it. He described it. He celebrated it. And He told us to drink abundantly.
So if God Himself celebrates the full range of marital intimacy, what does the framework say about boundaries?
What is permitted within the marriage bed? The framework’s answer is simple: whatever both partners freely and lovingly choose together. The bed is undefiled. There is no Levitical code for marital intimacy. There is no list of approved positions or acts. There is one rule: love. “The love of Christ constraineth us” (2 Corinthians 5:14). What love constrains, love also frees. If both partners give freely and receive gratefully, the bed is undefiled. If either partner is coerced, manipulated, or shamed, the bed is defiled, not by the act, but by the absence of love.
The church’s silence on this topic has done more damage than its preaching on any other. Generations of believers have entered marriage with guilt, shame, and confusion about something God designed to be the most intimate rendering of covenant love available to human beings. The man who feels guilty for desiring his wife has been poisoned by Plato, not convicted by the Spirit. The woman who feels shame for enjoying her husband has been taught by the culture, not by the Song of Solomon. And the marriage that treats sex as an obligation rather than a celebration has lost the substance while keeping the ceremony.
The covenant precedes the ceremony. The love precedes the act. And the act, when it flows from the love, is worship in the truest sense, two image-bearers rendering the covenant in flesh, the glass coming down, the invisible becoming visible, the mystery of Christ and the church collapsed into a moment between a man and a woman who chose each other.
And this is why the section sits in the eschatology. The temporal one-flesh is the preview. The eternal one-flesh is the substance. The bed is a window onto the final state, where the glass comes down forever for everyone, the Bridegroom meets the Bride, and the union the framework keeps pointing at arrives in full at the marriage supper of the Lamb. What the body does now is the rehearsal. The performance is the rest of forever.
The bed is undefiled. Let the church say so.
For further study: Gen. 2:24-25; Gen. 26:8; Prov. 5:15-19; Song 1:2; Song 1:13; Song 2:3; Song 2:6; Song 4:1-7; Song 4:11; Song 4:16; Song 5:1; Song 5:4; Song 7:1-9; Song 7:10-12; Song 8:6-7; Isa. 25:6-8; 1 Cor. 7:3-5; 1 Cor. 7:9; Eph. 5:28-32; Heb. 13:4; 1 Tim. 4:1-5; Rev. 19:7-9; Rev. 21:1-5.
The last things are authored the same way the first things are authored. The millennium is a frame. The Second Coming is a frame. The final rendering is a frame. The Author wrote every one of them. And the people of God are held inside the sentence from the first frame to the last.
Copyright © 2026 by Brandan Kraft. All rights reserved.
Published by Pristine Grace Publishing · pristinegrace.org
ISBN: 979-8-234-05049-6 · First Edition, 2026
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