Daniel Message 6
Special: Pre, A, and Postmillennialism – Part I
In Daniel 2 we have seen the wisdom background of the book; we have seen that this book is basically written first for wisdom and only secondarily for prophecy. That tells us something about the purpose of prophecy; it tells us that prophecy was given at a point in history to comfort. Prophecy is necessary for you to know as a believer in Jesus Christ. Prophecy will give you stability in the midst of confusion. Prophecy orients your life because it tells you what is in store for eternity; it tells you what about life is to go on for eternity and what about life is only temporary.
Since we get into the dream vision I’m going to depart and go rapidly through the dream vision first, and then we are going to spend two classes on the various systems of prophetic interpretation given in Scripture because as I’ve thought how to present this, we’re going to get into this issue again and again as we go through it, so I want to get it all out at once, then as we go through verse by verse you’ll be looking for certain things. But you won’t know what to look for if you’re not aware of the controversy in the field of eschatology, or prophecy, or the doctrine of last things.
In this dream, if you look at verse 31, four things are seen. In Daniel 2:31 Daniel recounts the dream to Nebuchadnezzar. “Thou, O king, saw, and beheld a great image.” Remember this image was given by God to Nebuchadnezzar to show that even though Nebuchadnezzar was the most powerful man on earth, this was given in his second year of reign, which was precisely the year that Nebuchadnezzar was able to congeal his forces after the battle of Carchemish, after his armies were able to control Palestine and hence subordinate Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar is a very young man, is an accomplished military general. He is a man that holds in his hand the power of the ancient world. He has the greatest culture that ever existed up until that moment of history. And yet this man senses through the dream that all of this human viewpoint knowledge is basically weak because it can’t deal with eternal issues.
We used the illustration of a boat; what good does it do to build a fine boat if you don’t know where the boat’s going. That’s the fallacy of all philosophy that is not based on divine revelation in God’s Word, it gives you no eternal roots, it can’t tell you where you are going. And because Nebuchadnezzar sees this, he reacts with viciousness against all human viewpoint culture. And this explains his reaction, it explains why people have reacted toward education the way they have. People wonder why is it that children of middle and upper class homes can be in such flat out rebellion against authority in the schools. Why is there so much hatred for the system? Simply because they’ve been ripped off by the system. Education has promised to provide answers and modern education does not provide answers because from the very start, from the time the child steps through the door into the classroom, God’s Word is rejected as the final authority. It’s always the humanist’s authority that’s first. So therefore education has never been able to deliver the goods.
So Nebuchadnezzar’s angry and he calls for someone to not only give him the interpretation but also the dream because he wants to test the source of true knowledge. Daniel alone is able to provide and so he says this is the image that you saw. Daniel 2:31, “This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before you, and the form of it was terrible. [32] This image’s head was of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, [33] Its legs of iron, its feet part of iron and part of clay. [34] Thou sawest until a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon its feet that were of iron and clay, and broke them to pieces. [35] Then were the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them; and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.
[36] This is the dream, and we will tell its interpretation before the king. [37] Thou, O king, art a king of kings; for the God of heaven has given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. [38] And wherever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heavens hath He given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold. [39] And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of bronze, which shall bear rule over all the earth.
[40] And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, forasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and subdues all things; and, as iron that breaks all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. [41] And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. [42] And as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken. [43] And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not adhere one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.
[44] And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. [45] Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter; and the dream is certain, and the interpretation of it sure.”
Now the controversy, and there is much that centers on this, must be answered and must be dealt with. However you approach every other prophecy in Scripture depends basically on how you handle Daniel 2. This is the cornerstone of the whole thing. Come up with the wrong answer here and you’re bound to misinterpret Matthew 24 and 25, the book of Revelation and other passages of prophecy in Scripture. This is a central point of prophecy.
There are three basic schools of prophetic interpretation. This morning we’ll go as far as time will allow in developing these schools. Most of you are acquainted with the premillennial school. Some of you may have heard the Amill view, it might not have been called that but that was what you were being taught. I doubt if many of you have dealt firsthand with the postmillennial school of thought. So we’re going to stop in our verse and verse exposition of Daniel and spend time on the millennial issue. To do this we’ll necessarily have to deal topically with the issue, not verse by verse. So what I have to say will be more in the form of a topical type approach; we’ll be going to various texts in the Scripture, but only as they support or refute these topics.
When you face the confusion in prophecy the tendency is to back off and say I don’t want to be bothered, I know there are a thousand different answers to this thing, it’s just too complicated, I don’t want to spend time on it, it’s too controversial.
We want to start off by saying at least the church of Jesus Christ has never come up with a creedal agreement on any school of prophecy. Today there are three denominations that have taken an official stand on prophecy and all of them are amillennial. But in the history of the church we’ve never had a great ecumenical agreement on prophecy such as we have had in Christology, the doctrine of Jesus Christ at Chalcedon; such as the Protestants got together and agreed that salvation comes by grace and faith alone, it is heaven centered, not heart centered. That has been made into creeds, but as far as making one particular school of prophecy into a creed that has not yet come to pass.
A few generations back a man by the name of Dr. Orr wrote a book called The Progress of Dogma, which is simply a narration of church history in which he noted something very peculiar. The church has been going on for some 1900 years; during the 1900 years of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ on earth there has been a gradual development of theology and doctrine. In the first years of the church basically it was the base of apologetics, how do we answer the non-Christian; how do we go out and give the gospel to the world, what is our base. That was an item of controversy. And then along with it came the great controversies associated with the person of Jesus Christ. Who in fact was Jesus Christ? Is God Triune or is Jesus Christ just a man on whom the Spirit of God came. And the heresies of the church called Arianism, and Sabellianism and other kinds of heresies that crept in and forced the church to define itself, out of which we have that famous statement of the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ, given at Chalcedon, that Jesus Christ is undiminished deity, without confusion, united with true humanity in one person forever. That was the great statement of Chalcedon, and that came out of years and years of thrashing it out until we arrived at an accurate statement of what the Bible teaches.
Then after this came the area of how is salvation made available to man. The issue came up with Anselm; to what did Jesus Christ give His salvation, was it a ransom; did Jesus Christ pay Satan to release the human race, or in fact did Jesus Christ propitiate God? Is Jesus Christ’s cross the real [can’t understand word] of salvation or it is Jesus Christ present work in heaven. And out of that came a statement of the atonement, and the man most noted for that is Anselm. Then in the Protestant era we had a further development of doctrine; we had the doctrine of the gospel or how is a person saved, knowing once the basis of salvation, can we come to some sort of a statement that many, many Christians can agree upon, and the statement was that we are saved not by works but by grace; we are saved by Jesus Christ’s finished work in heaven, not by some work of infused grace in the heart. And so we have the great creeds that come out of the Reformation.
Orr predicted, and it was a prediction in his day, that the next great segment of doctrine, and in fact the last segment of systematic theology to be agreed upon by the church and to be thrashed out would be eschatology, or the doctrine of the future. Eschatology, the knowledge of the last things, and it was this, said Orr, that would be the great discussion of the last of the 19th and 20th centuries. In fact, he said when this is done, the church will have completed her understanding of theology. Every one of the great major areas of theology would have been dealt with in this period. Such actually has happened, and so we’re going to define the three competing views that have gone on in history, that have come into the 20th century, and all three of these views have been held by Bible-believing Christians. Just because some one holds a different view of eschatology does not mean they deny inerrancy of Scripture. They can hold to inerrancy and hold to these.
What are the three views? They can be defined several ways; I have thought how to define them to make the issue most clear and I think the easiest way to define them is to define them in terms of the relationship between the church and the kingdom. In this case the Church, as you meet it in the New Testament, the kingdom as you meet it in the Old Testament. The kingdom, that time in history when Messiah is to reign over all the nations; the kingdom when God’s Word would go forth out of Israel to all the continents of the world; the kingdom when the King would be here and the King would exercise His kingly powers over all people. That’s the kingdom, the kingdom of God that was the answer in the long range to Nimrod’s kingdom. Then in the New Testament this body that’s called the Church; what is the relationship of the Church and the kingdom, and how are these both tied to the second return of Jesus Christ?
One view, which is the most popular view numerically in evangelicals, is the amillennial view. Numerically this is the most popular view in evangelical circles. It holds that the Church is the kingdom and there is an identity of the two; the Church spiritually fulfills the prophecies of the Old Testament. And so on a time line you have this kind of thing; you have the cross of Jesus Christ, you have the Church, you have the Kingdom, you have Christ’s Second Advent and then you have the eternal state; it’s a very simple scheme, and it’s to some people very attractive. It is called amillennialism because it denies that there is a time of a future reign on earth politically physically by Jesus Christ; it’s a denial, it’s anti-millennialism, or amillennialism. This is the only one of the three prophetic schools that is held officially by denominations today. The Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church holds this; the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, some small Baptist groups hold this, and it’s largely the unofficial creed of many other churches.
The amillennial position—the Church is the kingdom, the scheme is very simple; we go from the First Advent of Christ to the Second Advent of Christ, the Second Advent of Christ ends everything and we go into the eternal state, and the Church basically is considered the spiritual kingdom of God. That is the amillennial view.
Now let’s come to a second view. The second view that developed out of that was the postmillennial view. This says that the Church is going to produce the kingdom in history, so we have a time scheme that looks like this; the cross of Jesus Christ, the existence of the Church in history, and then slowly by imperceptible degrees the kingdom of God is brought in by Christianization of the world and Jesus Christ returns. The Church brings in the kingdom; the Church conquers, the Church subdues all of human culture. Jesus Christ conquers and fulfills His mission through the Church completely, and this is called postmillennialism, Christ returns after the kingdom or after the millennium. That’s why there’s a “post” there, after; Christ returns after the Church has brought into existence the kingdom of God on earth. Postmillennialism is a recent development and it is held by a number of people but not very many. Gary North, that was here recently for a seminar as an economist, represents a group in California that holds to the postmillennial view.
The third view, which is the view that this church holds, that most independent Bible teachers hold, is the premillennial concept. Pre because in the time scheme Jesus Christ’s First Advent, we go on down through history until His return, we have a kingdom of a thousand years and then the eternal state. In this view the Church is not the kingdom, the Church is just a forerunner of the Kingdom, and so we have the eternal state doesn’t begin with the return of Christ, but Christ’s temporary Messianic kingdom begins when He comes back. And then after a thousand years in which Christ reigns on earth physically, literally, politically and socially in a real kingdom, not a spiritual one, then we have the eternal state.
Now for the sake of following the position of each of these schools I’ve tried to think out ways of tracking this. I’ve tried to research so that when I quote to you I’ll be quoting from advocates of each school, I will not be quoting the post-mill as I see it, I’ll be quoting an actual post-millenarian writer and so on. And I’ve tried to sort out an easy way to track the discussion so you won’t lose the forest for the trees, and basically we find a three-fold controversy and we find three issues that we will follow. So all of the discussion will be following and tracking how each of these three positions handle three issues.
Now let’s look at the first issue. The first issue is Christ’s return. The issue is: does Jesus Christ return end history? That is, that after Jesus Christ returns do we go immediately into the eternal state? Is history all over completely? Is this mortal world terminated when Christ returns? On the chart you see in the column: pre, A, and post. Both amillennialism and postmillennialism agree that Jesus Christ’s return ends history. The premillennialist argues that Jesus Christ’s return does not end history, it moves history into the final stage but it does not end history. So on this the premillennial position stand apart from both the amillennial and postmillennial position.
The second issue is does the kingdom of God ever literally dominate this world culture? Does the kingdom of God ever literally subdue mortal culture; not the eternal state but this world? Is there ever a time in history when you can say we have finished, or must we say it is finished only in eternity, not in the eleventh hour of history. On this we find the premillennialist agrees with the postmillennialist; the premillennialist argues yes, there is a time in history when the kingdom of God subdues human culture, it will be during the millennium when Christ returns. The postmillennialist agrees, yes, there will be a time in history when the kingdom of God will subdue human culture and control all things, it will be brought in by the Church before Christ comes. But both the pre and the post agree that there must be a time in history when the Word is vindicated to history. There must be a time of vindication inside history.
This is why, thinking in terms of the recent economic seminar, there are areas in which the post and the premill agree, and why they both are interested in these areas. Economics is not something to be scraped because there’s no hope left for it. We both agree that the Word and the mandate is to conquer in this area. The only difference is the methodology and timing of the conquest. The amillennialist disagrees; he says there is never a time when the kingdom of God ever dominates human culture. There will never be a time when Jesus Christ reigns in very clear fashion, that the Word totally dominates human society this side of eternity, that will not come to pass, never will it come to pass, there is no such thing as that. So on the second issue the pre and the post agree against the amillennialist.
Now the third issue; the third issue is does evil remain in force until Jesus Christ returns? The premillennialist and the amillennialist both agree yes, evil does go on in history until Christ returns. We both agree that evil is so deeply rooted that it must take a catastrophic intervention by Jesus Christ to smash it. And so we both agree that evil is powerful. The postmillennialist on the other hand differs; he argues no, Jesus Christ will conquer evil through His Church and that it is possible that the powers of evil be rolled back. This is why, though it’s a pretty song and we can read in our own life, Onward Christian Soldiers is a postmillennialist hymn. “Like a mighty army moves the church of God,” it’s talking about rolling back evil to prepare the way for the postmillennial return of Jesus Christ.
So that’s the breakdown of these three issues. Now I’m going to go through each one of these schools and I’m going to go to each one of the three issues in each one of the schools, so in all we will have discussed 9 points; 3 premill points, 3 amill points, 3 postmill points.
I can only give, since this is a survey, it’s only when you get back into the text of Daniel when ideally you can claim to be swayed one way or the other. All I can do is present the highlights in this kind of a comparative approach. I can only define for you the issues and it’s up to you to make the choice. I’ll tell you why I believe one is superior to the other two; I can’t compel belief, I can only give reasons for belief. I can only state that this is our position, this is where we stand and this is why we stand where we stand. But the choice ultimately has to be made by you and it can’t be made by just listening to a few hours of this; you’ve got to get these issues in mind and as you read the text and you become more and more familiar with the Word of God and you press upon it these questions, which school to you seems to answer and fit the text of God’s Word. So we’re not going to be able to give great detail.
Now let’s go to the first position, the premillennial position and as I discuss it I’ll discuss each issue under two parts; I’ll discuss the origin and the history of the viewpoint and then I’ll teach you the features and the features will be the three you see on the chart. That’s how we’ll approach each school. We’ll teach the origin and the history of the viewpoint, where it got started, who got it started, how did it get started. Then we’ll go to what features, what does it do with certain passages of Scripture and we’ll go back to the three issues I showed you.
The origin and history of the premillennial position: The premillennial position goes back before the time of Jesus Christ. The premillennial position dates back to at least 100 BC, but within these times just before the Messiah came there were extra-Biblical writings called the Apocryphal writings, or the Pseudepigrapha. Several of these writings are quoted in the New Testament, not that they’re inspired because they’re not, but they do represent the thought of the time. Two books in particular stand out, two mysterious books, we don’t know who wrote them or how they were written, 1 and 2 Enoch, they were books that circulated among the interested communities of the ancient world, books that anticipated the coming of the Messiah and told about the Messiah in glowing terms, books that give us a peek into the mind of the people to whom John the Baptist said, “the kingdom of heaven is here.” This is what the people thought about that John the Baptist talked to. When he preached the kingdom these books tell us what kind of a kingdom these people thought he was talking about; 1 and 2 Enoch.
These two books are known because they introduce two apparently new ideas in the ongoing thinking about the Old Testament. The New Testament hasn’t been written yet, we’re still talking about the time before Christ, no New Testament. The canon of the Old Testament has been closed for four centuries; no new revelation has happened. These books are simply deductions based on the previously written revelation. And these two books came up with two ideas. The first idea was that the coming Messianic kingdom would not be permanent, it would be temporary. The first idea was that there would be a temporary Messianic kingdom. They came to this idea because they came to appreciate the depths of evil, that evil was so rooted into the world that even the physical reign of the Messiah would not be sufficient to eradicate evil from the system, that in the mortal world with death and sickness and disease and sorrow, that even the presence of Messiah Himself would not be sufficient to bring in Paradise. So these people argued that the Messianic kingdom would be but for a temporary time period and then afterwards we would go into the eternal state. Clearly it’s premillennial because the Messiah comes before His kingdom.
The second idea that these books introduce was the idea that the kingdom would be a thousand years long. It didn’t start with John in the book of Revelation. The idea of a temporary Messianic kingdom of only a thousand years duration at least preceded by John almost two centuries. The idea that the Messianic kingdom would be but a thousand years was a deduction. It’s very interesting now in retrospect to go back and ask ourselves why did these people think the Messianic kingdom would be limited to but one thousand years. Here’s the answer. They argued this way: that human history recapitulates the creation story, that one day is with the Lord as with a thousand years, and so they looked for 6,000 years of human history, and then there would be a rest, corresponding to the sabbath day of a final thousand years. And thus they deduced that the temporary Messianic kingdom would be but a thousand years.
Keep this in mind that these ideas were floating in the world; these are the ideas that were the [can’t understand words] of the world into which John taught the book of Revelation. So as John is going to teach certain things, and John doesn’t mean to teach the same things as 1 and 2 Enoch, then the obligation is upon the apostle John to make clear that it’s different from this thought; that’s why this is important to know. This is what was on the mind of the people, a temporary Messianic kingdom.
Now turn to Revelation 20. In teaching this I’m reminded of the first Sunday after I became a Christian, the boy that brought me to a meeting where I became a Christian invited me to church the following Sunday, and of all things, the pastor was on eschatology. I didn’t know Genesis from Revelation any way and when he started hitting Matthew 24, 25, Revelation 20, I figured that there was a lot I didn’t know about as far as Christianity was concerned. If you have that feeling I sympathize with you, but we have to press on because we are to teach the whole council of God. It isn’t easy, God didn’t intend it to be easy, He intended that you know it, whether it takes time, effort or not, it doesn’t make any difference, we are held responsible to know this material.
In Revelation 20:1, “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. [2] And he laid hold on the dragon that old serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, [3] 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.” Verse 4 describes how the saints are judged, and “they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” So Christ is present in this thousand year reign. Verse 7, “And when the thousand years are ended, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, [8] And shall go out to deceive the nations,” and obviously at the end, verse 9, “fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured” this end time rebellion. And then we have the eternal state. So we have Revelation 20 that the Apostle John, that we have Jesus Christ coming, that’s Revelation 19, He comes on that horse out of heaven, we have the thousand year period, we have a brief revolt at the end of the thousand years, then we have the eternal state, and thus John teaches what had been circulating in Jewish circles for almost 200 years included in the end of his apocalypse.
What about after John, after the apostles die, what information do we have then about the premillennial view? Did it die or did it go on? Every major church historian agrees, whether he’s amill, premill, or postmill, they all agree on one thing, that up until 400 AD the majority view of the Church was premillennial. It was held by the major leaders, men like Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, all these men were ardent premillennialist. For example, hear the words of Justin Martyr, who was born in 100 AD, a man who therefore learned his doctrine from men who had learned their doctrine from the apostles. We have a man writing who is only two generations removed from the apostles.
Here’s what Justin Martyr says: “But I, and whoever are on all points like-minded,” Christians, “know that there will be a resurrection of the dead and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, enlarged as the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others have declared. And further, a certain man with us, named John, one of the apostles of Christ, predicted by a revelation that was made to him that those who believed in our Christ would spend a thousand years in Jerusalem and thereafter the general, or to speak briefly, the eternal resurrection and judgment of all men would likewise take place.” Justin Martyr, two generations removed from the apostles.
About the same era is Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons, Irenaeus learned from a man by the name of Polycarp, and Polycarp learned from a man by the name of John, in Ephesus, the apostle John. So again we have a man who was only two generations removed from the apostles. What does Irenaeus say? He says: “But when this antichrist shall have devastated all things in the world, he will reign for three years and six months and he will sit in the temple at Jerusalem.” Now remember Irenaeus is writing this in the first century, there is no temple at Jerusalem. So therefore by saying this Irenaeus is saying the temple will be rebuilt, it’s not a spiritual temple, it’s a literal temple. “He will sit in the temple of Jerusalem, and then the Lord will come from heaven in the clouds, in the glory of the Father, sending this man and those that follow him into the Lake of Fire, but bringing in for the righteous the times of the kingdom, that is the sabbath rest, the hallowed day, and restore to Abraham his promised inheritance.” So the Messianic kingdom again, by Irenaeus.
We could go on and multiply all these statements but the doctrine as it was then known was not called premillennialism; it was called Chiliasm, for the word thousand, and if you read church history books that’s what you look for; Chiliasm because it was the doctrine of the premillennial reign of Jesus Christ. This idea of Chiliasm went on and on in church history until it began to fade in 300-500 AD. Why did premillennialism die out? Three reasons.
The first reason was political. During this time the church became more and more powerful; Constantine finally granted official status to the Church, and when it enjoyed the official status of Constantine and the Roman government the Church was now no longer a persecuted minority. The Church was now no longer some set of vagabonds who were being martyred by the police state; they were not amalgamated with the state. The Church was in a position of ascendancy and political power, and then interestingly the doctrine of premillennialism died off. The idea now became the Church was the kingdom, the Church was no longer the forerunner of the kingdom, it became the kingdom.
A second reason why premillennialism died away was philosophical. Attacks had been waged upon it for years by men who had followed the resurgent teachings of Plato, the Neo-Platonists, chief of whom Origen and Augustine. Augustine and Origen both followed the idea that matter is inherently evil and the spirit world inherently good, and thus the idea of a real physical material kingdom was offensive to their theology and philosophy. When God manifested Himself He would manifest Himself spiritually but He would not manifest Himself materially and physically, and thus we have again pressure against the premillennialist point of view.
And finally there’s a third reason, a progressive anti-Semitism of the Church in which the Hebrew Christians are compelled to deny their Jewishness; there would be special creeds written for the Jewish Christian; in these creeds, unlike the creeds adopted for the Gentiles, the Jew who trusted in Christ must not only accept Jesus as Messiah but he must also give up all connection with his Jewishness, and so therefore the Church wishes to purge itself of Jewish dreams, and so the Chiliasm, which is a Jewish dream, obviously, it’s that the state of Israel is going to be restored, the state of Israel is going to be the capital of the world, it’s a Jewish dream, so we get rid of Jewish dreams and along with it we get rid of the millennial kingdom.
So there were three forces against the premillennialist position at that point. These three forces came to fruition in a book called The City of God, by Augustine, in which Augustine officially made the statement that the Church is the kingdom, and now there would be no further kingdom; when Christ returned again that would put an end to it all. And the position of Augustine was followed on down through into the Reformation. We read in the Reformation creed, the Augsburg Confession, Article XVII, “Jewish opinions that before the resurrection of the dead the godly shall occupy the kingdom of the world, the wicked being everywhere oppressed, we deny.” In another Reformation creed, the Second Helvetic Confession, chapter 11, “We condemn Jewish dreams that before the day of judgment there shall be a golden age in the earth.” So obviously there is a stream of anti-Semitism that is associated with the decline and suppression of the premillennial point of view and it’s not an accident. This has gone on and on again in history.
But all during the Middle Ages, up to the time of the Reformation: we have Roman Catholicism with Augustine, we come up in time to the Reformers in Protestantism, all during this time the official line is amillennialism. That’s the official line; premillennialism is all in the grass roots, but… and here’s where premillennialism, another thing to watch for carefully, it was distorted and during the Middle Ages the premillennialists, or the Chiliasts got some very, very bad black eyes in the light of the Christian church, and it is these black eyes that when you identify yourself as a premill in certain quarters, people who know church history are going to think certain things about you because you’ve told them that you are a premill. Know your heritage and why people may look at you the way they do; if they are an intelligent person that knows church history they’ll respond to you a certain way. Here’s why they respond to you. During the Middle Ages the people who believed in the premill position were never well taught, and there were all sorts of fanciful creations about the millennium. The idea was that the millennium was something like the Islam people look forward to, a lot of carnal speculation. And finally it led to disaster in a man by the name of Thomas Munzer; Munzer was a radical, he was a forerunner of the communists and the Nazi’s. He was a man that had the idea that the millennial kingdom must be brought in by force and so instead of having Christ return catastrophically to bring in the social order, he would bring it in with an anarchistic revolt. And so the precursors of the modern movements of Nazism and communism were Chiliasts. In fact, the communist documents again and again and again traced their origin back to Thomas Munzer.
And Luther and Calvin, obviously alarmed by these men, suppressed Chiliasm and Munzer together. So Chiliasm has always been looked upon as a source of radical thought. It’s always been looked upon as a very, very dangerous kind of thing, that was let loose at the end of the Middle Ages and eventually culminated in communism. Communism and Nazism basically is a stolen premillenarian position.
Finally later on men like Delitzsch, a Hebrew Christian who wrote one of the great commentaries of the Old Testament, the Puritan’s preacher, Cotton Mather, John Wesley, Dean Alford and others became premill. And finally in 1878 we have the fundamentalist great Bible conferences, one in 1878 and one in 1886 in which fundamentalism defined its premillennial position. And since that time fundamentalism has been largely premillenarian.
Now what are the features of premillenarianism? Let’s look at those three issues again. We said there were three issues; Christ’s return ends history, or does it begin a new kingdom; is it final or not. The second issue was the kingdom of God ever conquer all human culture. The third issue was does evil remain until it’s knocked out of the way by the catastrophic return of Jesus Christ? Those are the three issues. What does premillenarianism say?
The first issue: Christ’s return does not end history; the key passage is Revelation 20. Undoubtedly, admittedly premillenarianism builds on Revelation 20, that Jesus Christ’s return there is pictured as inaugurating a thousand year reign. Other passages that teach Jesus Christ’s return, such as 1 Corinthians 15, Matthew 25, these passages must be interpreted in the light of Revelation 20; in other words, the premill argues that there must be gaps in Matthew 24 and 25. Turn there and we’ll see what we mean by gaps.
In Matthew 24 Jesus Christ is asked to talk about those things which are to come to pass. In Matthew 24:29 He says, “after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give its light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. [30] And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. [31] And He shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” And he goes on to say in Matthew 25:31, “When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory. [32] And before Him shall be gathered all the nations; and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. [33] And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. [34] Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye, blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” And Matthew 25:46, those on His left “shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.”
In the premillennial position, Matthew 24 and 25 describing the return of Jesus Christ can’t be describing the same judgment as Revelation 20, that the judgment of Matthew 24-25 is an elimination of the unbelievers from this world, leaving only believers to inherit the millennial kingdom at that point in time. Thus, because of Revelation 20 we must interpret Matthew 24-25 in accordance with Revelation 20, that in fact there is some sort of an abbreviated revelation given in Matthew 24-25. It’s describing only the Second Advent of Christ and the immediate beginning of His kingdom. That’s the first point of the premillenarian position, that Jesus Christ’s return does not end history, it starts a temporary kingdom.
The second point is that the kingdom of the Old Testament, the kingdom of God, according to the premillenarian must… MUST at some point dominate this mortal world; it must at some point dominate this mortal world! The first point, Jesus Christ’s coming shall not end human history, that point the premill is against both the amill and the postmill. The premill is alone in this position; he stands against both of the other positions. On the second point he is not alone; he and the postmillenarian stand together and they do so on the basis of Genesis 1:26, the mandate given to man at creation. God said: “Let us make man in our image, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over every creeping thing.” God said in Geneses 1:28, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” And so argue the postmill and the premill that if the kingdom of God is really going to solve and meet man’s needs it’s got to do what the mandate of creation originally commissioned man to do which was not to dominate eternity but to dominate time. And so the kingdom of God must show itself politically and socially in time, not just in eternity.
The pre and the postmillenarian agree against the amillenarian at this point. Says Dr. Ryrie: “Concerning the goal of history, the premillenarian dispensationalists find it in the establishment of the millennial kingdom on earth, which the covenant theologian regards as the eternal state. This does not mean that the dispensationalist minimizes the glory of the eternal state, but they insist that the display of the glory of God, who is sovereign in human history, must be seen in the present heavens and earth as well as in the new heavens and the new earth.”
Alva McLain: “It says” premillenarianism “says that life here and now, in spite of the tragedy of sin, is nevertheless something worthwhile and therefore all efforts to make it better are also worthwhile. All the true values of human life will be preserved and carry over into the coming kingdom. Nothing worthwhile shall be lost.” And this means that as we go on in the premillenarian position we have the return of Jesus Christ. This is a point that a lot of premills don’t see; a lot don’t see it and because they don’t see it they give premillenarianism a bad name. Every bona fide piece of human culture, such as art, music, technology, science, etc. will be carried into the millennial kingdom; that when Christ sets up His kingdom He is not going to our technology for us. He is not going to write music for us, He is not going to do the art work for us. The repertoire of man’s creativity will be passed into the millennial kingdom, it will be inherited by believers only, and then they will create on top of the past repertoire of man’s productivity to produce a tremendous civilization on earth. In other words, every addition to the culture of man now, before Christ returns, will be preserved and carried into Christ’s millennial kingdom. So therefore the premillenarian, let me not hear it said, is a pessimist when it comes to culture; he’s an optimist. Everything that we do, every discovery that has been made, the discovery of electricity, the discovery of nuclear power, these discoveries will be utilized in the millennial kingdom. The millennial kingdom will not just be eternity, it’s not a totally supernatural thing. The millennial kingdom will be on earth, there will be mortality, people will be dying, there will be human technology, human art, and human productivity. So therefore the kingdom of God will free men from this kind of thing.
The idea also in premillenarianism is, if you turn to Isaiah 2, that passages like these, and there are many of them, I’ll just show you two, passages that you read in your Bible like these that speak of a golden era but that is mortal, a golden era yet that is mortal, that is, it’s still subject to death, it’s still subject to some sin; a golden era that is mortal, all these thousands of prophecies refer not to the Church Age but to the coming millennial kingdom. Isaiah 2:2, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. [3] And may people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths….” Verse 4, very important, “And He shall judge among the nations,” meaning that there is still sin in this golden era. So the premillennialist when he reads passage like this that speak of a golden age says look, this is a golden age, not in eternity, no way you can symbolize this and allegorize this, this is talking about a golden age in this world because it’s talking about sin; sin is still there. It will be reduced but it’s still there.
Then Isaiah 65:20 which is a second kind of passage; these are the only two I’ll show you but they’re representative. Passages like this do not refer to eternity, argues the premillenarian, they refer to a golden era on this earth. “There shall be no more in it an infant of days, nor an old man that has not filled his days; for the child shall die an hundred years old, but the sinner,” the sinner, it’s not eternity, sin still exists, “but the sinner an hundred years old, shall be accursed. [21] And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them.” There shall be the normal activities of the creation man made of Genesis 1. Verse 22, “They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat;” meaning that capitalism will be the economic system of the golden era. There will be no more socialism where man’s production is stripped and stolen from him by the state. Verse 23, “They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the LORD….”
Isaiah 65:24, “And it shall come to pass that, before they call, I will answer,” instantaneous prayer. Verse 25, “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock, and the dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD.” There will be a zoological transformation, the premillennialist argues; he argues this is not symbolic, this is not allegorical, there will be a transformation, yet so as not to bring in the eternal state. So both the pre and the post agree on this, that these prophecies are not talking about the eternal state.
Now the third and last point on the features of the premillennial position, namely that evil will endure. We’ll just go on a verse chain to show this, starting with Romans 8. The third argument, that evil endures until it’s knocked out of the way by Jesus Christ. In this, remember the chart, on this third point who does the premillenarian agree with? He agrees with the amillennialist; now he disagrees with the post. The post believes that evil will be knocked out. Remember Onward Christian Soldiers, it will be knocked out by the mighty army before Christ returns. The premill and the amill say no, these passages say that evil persists.
Romans 8:18, “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us,” or by us. And it discusses in verse 23 waiting for the redemption of our body, which is the resurrection. So evil and suffering continue until the resurrection. 1 Corinthians 7:31, another passage showing the permanence of evil. “…the fashion of this world” says Paul, “passes away.” The world is dying; it’s under the second law, so to speak. Chaos is increasing, the process can’t be stopped.
2 Corinthians 4:4 argues that’s there’s a god of this age, a god of this era, and the god of this era is not Jesus Christ, the god of this era is Satan; it’s clearly stated in 2 Corinthians 4:4, “the god of this era [age] blinds the minds of them who believe not,” and it goes on. I could give you a dozen verses until we finally wind up in Revelation 20:3. Since we started here we’ll end here. The devil is imprisoned for a thousand years, and he’s imprisoned in order that he not deceive the nations any more until the thousand years be fulfilled, so the argument is that Satan is deceiving, he continues to deceive until Jesus Christ returns in Revelation 19 and the angel imprisons Satan and he’s kept in prison for a thousand years. The forces of evil, then, to the premillennialist and the amillennialist are so intense and so vigorous that they render, they think, the postmillennial concept as a mere dream, and illusion. The mighty army that is of God is not going to be victorious over Satan’s domain.
Some comments on this: even the postmillenarianist, and I quote from one now, Lorraine Boettner who was a postmillenarian author, even says this, he admits it in his book, page 60: “On postmillennial grounds it hardly seems that we, even in the most advanced nations on earth, have seen anything that is worthy of the calling more than the early dawn of the millennium,” and we’d agree. An amillennialist writes, supporting our position: “The Christian congregation is in miniature exactly what the postmillennialist expects the millennium to be on a larger scale. But the sin and consequent problems among Christians proves that such a society would be far from golden.” And so if it’s true that the Church is to bring in the millennium and it’s true that the existing church in our local congregations are the start of the millennium, it’s not going to be a very enjoyable millennium. That’s the kind of thing that the postmillenarians must look forward to on a global scale, one massive congregation, and that just isn’t a realistic hope to satisfy men.
The other views of prophecy, the amillennial and postmillennial views we’ll cover tonight and then we’ll deal with why we accept the premillennial position. I hope that in this discussion you at least have been brought to certain Scriptures that speak of God’s program for history; now when we interpret the passage in Daniel 2 we must pay close attention. Does it vindicate the premillennial position, is that fourth kingdom going to be smashed gradually by the mighty armies led by God, or is it going to be smashed catastrophically by an intervention brought by Christ’s return.