Doctrine of the Last Things (Part 16): Postmillennialism & Premillennialism

Postmillennialism & Premillennialism

We’re going to be continuing our discussion of various views of the millennium. Having looked last week at amillennialism, today we want to consider arguments pro and con concerning postmillennialism. The postmillennialist will say that Christ has given a Great Commission to his church to fulfill, and that the church will indeed fulfill that Commission. The Great Commission is found in Matthew 28:18-20:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

The postmillennialist will say that there are indications in Scripture that the church will, in the power of the Holy Spirit, carry out this Great Commission and be successful in its mission. For example, Matthew 13:31-32.

Another parable he put before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

Here Jesus says that from its ignominious beginnings, the Kingdom of God is going to spread throughout human society and become a great cultural influence and indeed transform the world. Jesus tells a lot of parables of this sort. There are many passages that suggest that there will be this tremendous harvest of souls that will come into the Kingdom of God as the church fulfills the Great Commission.

Postmillennialists employ the same sorts of arguments against the literal interpretation that the amillennialist has already given. But they add this additional note – there is a great triumph that will occur through the church’s obedience to its Great Commission.

Against postmillennialism many people have said that this view was an overly optimistic and rather naive view of human history that came to a shattering end with the 20^th century – World War I and World War II and the horrors that have followed the withdrawal of the colonial powers from the third world in the aftermath of colonialism. But I’m not persuaded that that kind of argument has any sort of merit in terms of the Scriptural warrant for or against a view. What we see in our lifetime could just be a tiny blip in the whole scheme of human history. If Christ returns, say, in AD 5,000 or AD 12,000 then what happens in the present century could be nothing. The fact is that the Christian church has grown from the most ignominious beginnings in the first century throughout the entire world, so that now there are over three and a half billion people on Earth that at least claim to be Christians. The Christian church and the Christian movement is in fact the largest, most successful movement in the history of mankind. It really is astonishing when you look at the history of how this movement spread geographically over the twenty centuries of its existence. So we must not take the short-term perspective and say that just because the past century has involved a lot of evil and suffering therefore the church is not going to be successful in its mission.

In fact, quite the contrary, it has been in the midst of this suffering and war that the growth of evangelical Christianity throughout the world has been without parallel in church history. The last twenty-five years of the 20^th century were a period of church growth around the world that was simply unprecedented, as in Africa, Asia, and Latin America the church has grown by leaps and bounds. So we must not be misled by the disastrous things that are happening in our world to think that the church is failing in its Great Commission.

On the other hand, I think that there are good arguments that could be raised against the postmillennial view.

1. Passages about the Kingdom of God’s growing from the size of a mustard seed to a large tree, or about the leaven that a woman puts in the lump until the whole dough is leavened don’t really say exactly how large the Kingdom of God will grow to be among humanity. It could be true that there has been and will be a great harvest of souls for the Kingdom of God – millions and millions of people coming to Christ – but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is going to be a sort of millennial kingdom established on Earth.

2. There are a good number of passages in Scripture that predict quite the opposite. In the end times, there will actually be a falling away from the truth. There will be an apostasy and departure from belief. For example, 2 Timothy 3:1-5, Paul says,

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it.

Paul here predicts that there is going to be a falling away in the last times. Jesus himself asks, when the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on Earth? That is an open question.

3. The postmillennialist doesn’t really deal very well with the tribulation that is going to precede Christ’s return. You’ll remember that Jesus taught there would be a terrible time of tribulation before Christ would return and establish his Kingdom. Certainly the book of Revelation teaches this as well. Postmillennialists will see these predictions fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. So that requires that they take a kind of preterist view of those predictions. Insofar as the postmillennialist has to appeal to preterism to preserve his view from this criticism, I think it becomes implausible for the reasons that I already laid out when I criticized preterism. Although preterism has some nice features to it, in the end I think it can’t make sense of the biblical data, particularly concerning the resurrection of the dead.

Those are some of the arguments for and against postmillennialism.

Now let’s say something about premillennialism.

First, the premillennialist will appeal to Old Testament prophecies of an earthly kingdom which will still involve mortality, sin, the presence of enemies, and so forth. In these Old Testament prophecies of God’s Kingdom, it says that these things such as death, sin, and the enemies of God will not be decisively done away with. So the premillennialist would say that the idea of a millennium such as John describes in the Apocalypse is right in line with these Old Testament prophecies about God’s Kingdom.

Secondly, they point out that believers are supposed to reign with Christ here on Earth. Christ has said that we will reign with him. But that is nowhere spoken of in the Scripture as a present reality. So against the postmillennialist, we are not now reigning with Christ in human history. This will require the return of Christ and the establishment of the millennial kingdom that these prophecies concern involving the co-regency of believers with Christ here on Earth.

What might be said in response to those arguments? Certainly it is true with regard to the first argument that there are these Old Testament prophecies about the Kingdom of God being established. But if you take those literally, then it leads to some very discomforting conclusions. For example, these prophecies in the Old Testament envision an era in which the temple sacrifices will be renewed. There will be the temple in Jerusalem, where once again animal sacrifices are going to be offered to God. Now, wait a minute! The book of Hebrews talks about how Christ is the final sacrifice for sin. He has done away with the animal sacrifices of the old covenant permanently. So are we to think that the Kingdom of God that Christ has come to establish will involve a renewal of animal sacrifices in the Jewish temple? That seems crazy. But if you say that this is non-literal then, of course, you have taken a step toward the other views of the millennium – the postmillennial or the amillennial approach. You have to ask yourself, aren’t the prophecies of the Kingdom predictions of Christ’s spiritual Kingdom – that is ruling right now and will come to completion when Christ returns?

Secondly, what about the believers’ reigning with Christ? I think this is an interesting argument. I would think that the verses where Jesus says to his disciples that, “You will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” certainly envisions that kind of earthly Kingdom being established. Then Christ will be the King over all of them. But one needs to ask why is this something that happens on the present Earth? Why couldn’t this be the establishment of Christ’s Kingdom when the new heavens and the new Earth are ushered in and we reign with Christ in eternity, rather than just for this thousand-year period?

As I said earlier, I don’t have any final verdict on this debate. This is not a question that I’ve studied. But these are at least some of the issues that are raised pro and con with regard to these three perspectives. You can make up your own minds.

Next time we will begin to look at the state of the soul after death. What does the Scripture have to say about the destiny of people after they die? Do we go immediately to heaven or to hell when we die? That will be the question that we take up next.^[1]