Can we not accept the straightforward, face-value teaching of the Old Testament? As a whole, it is clearly apocalyptic, messianic, and Israelitic. In the context of a new heavens and new earth, these things constitute the “glory” of the age to come. Nowhere in the New Testament is this glory questioned; rather it is universally assumed and affirmed (cf. Matt. 19:28; 24:30; 25:31; Rom. 8:18; 1 Cor. 15:43; 2 Cor. 4:17; Eph. 1:18; Phil. 3:21; Col. 3:4; 2 Thess. 1:10; 2 Tim. 2:10; Titus 2:13; 1 Peter 4:13; 5:10; Jude 24). The Messiah came the first time to suffer and bear sin. Why would this simple fact alter the Jewish hope? 
          The various Christoplatonic eschatologies held throughout the church’s history inherently contradict the Old Testament’s unequivocal vision of divine glory. Rather, the New Testament affirms the hope of the Old Testament, arguing simply that God sent his Messiah first as a sacrifice for the sin of humanity before sending his Messiah again to execute judgment upon the sin of humanity (cf. Acts 3:18–26; Rom. 5:1–9; Heb. 10:12–13). Therefore Jew and Gentile alike must repent of their sins, accept God’s predetermined atonement as the means of escaping divine wrath, and thus together inherit the glory of eternal life. Though lacking the theological sophistication of the modern academy and its inaugurational refinement, I find this to be the common-sense approach to the Scriptures that most reasonably corresponds to the apostolic witness in its premodern, first-century Jewish context. -John P Harrigan