We now come to the end of our brief overview
of matters relating to the end times, and it would certainly be alack if I left out
at least a small or simple summary of the various eschatological positions that vie
with each other for acceptance in our day that are usually articulated in terms of how
one understands the New Testament teaching of the millennium. We'll look at the biblical text for that in
a moment, but you hear the various schools of thought describing a kind of theological
shorthand where we say somebody is premillenarian, or they're premill; somebody else is postmill;
somebody else is amill; somebody else is dispensational – a particular type of premill – and so
on. And these different theological and eschatological
positions are all defined in terms of how they understand the millennium. But these issues are not simply about the
millennium. They represent a whole, complete different
view of eschatological matters besides how one understands the millennial question. But let's look at the text that has engendered
so much discussion about the millennium. We find it in the book of Revelation in the
twentieth chapter beginning at verse 1. We read, "Then I saw an angel coming down
from heaven having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of
old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years." So here's the first reference to the thousand-year
period, and it has to do with the binding or chaining of Satan, where Satan is held
in captivity according to the imagery here of Revelation for a period of a thousand years. "And he cast him into the bottomless pit,
and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more
till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released
for a little while." So, you get the picture in the chronology
so far? Satan is bound; he's held captive; he's in
the bottomless pit for a thousand years; and at the end of that thousand years he's going
to be released for a little while. And then we read, "And I saw thrones and they
sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been
beheaded for their witness to Jesus, and for the word of God who had not worshiped the
beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for
a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again
until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the
first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but
they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with Him a thousand years. Now, when the thousand years have expired,
Satan will be released from his prison, will go out to deceive the nations which are in
the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle whose number
is as the sand in the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth
and surrounded the camp of the saints in the beloved city and fire came down from God out
of heaven and devoured them. The devil who deceived them was cast into
the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be
tormented day and night forever and ever. And then I saw a great white throne," and
so on, and the description of the judgment. So here we hear about an interim period of
history of a thousand years where Satan is bound and Christ is reigning together with
His saints followed by the unloosing of Satan who then at that time will wage war against
Christ and against His saints, and of course the outcome of that war is not in doubt as
Christ will ultimately triumph and together with the saints will reign forever. Now, how is this period of a thousand years
– and this is the only place we find any specific reference to it in the Bible, but
of course, you only have to find it once to take it seriously. How do the different schools of eschatology
look at this? Well, let's begin with the so-called amillennial
position. The word amillennial literally means no millennium. Someone who is amoral is not moral, and the
'a' represents a negation, and that position takes idea that the millennium that is described
here is not a literal thousand year period, but is speaking in symbolic language about
the history of the church. The amillennial position believes that the
age of the church is the age of the kingdom of God, and that the kingdom of God began
with the first appearance of Christ. And when He came He fulfilled the nearby prophecies
of John the Baptist who said the kingdom of God was at hand, in terms of radical nearness. When Jesus appeared on the scene He said the
kingdom of God is in your midst. He said if you see Me casting out Satan by
the finger of God, then you know that the kingdom of God has come upon you. And so in the ascension of Christ He ascends
to the right hand of God. He goes to His coronation where He is crowned
the King of kings and the Lord of lords. And so the amillennial position is based on
the conviction that the kingdom of God is not something that is completely out there
somewhere in the future, but that it has already begun. It has started. It still awaits its final consummation, but
the prophecies in the Old Testament that refer to the future of Israel and Israel's full
and final redemption refer, according to the amill position, to the church. The church is the kingdom of God. The church fulfills the prophecies of the
Old Testament. Now, the church includes both Gentiles and
Jews. The amill position would still leave room
for a future dealing of God with ethnic Israel, with Jewish people, but not in a separate
agenda, a separate program where God has one redemptive plan for the Jews and another redemptive
plan for the Gentiles, but rather all of the prophecy in the Bible refers to the church
and the kingdom of Christ, that it will include both Jews and Gentiles. Now, also the amill position believes that
the Christian community, as it manifests the kingdom, will have an ongoing positive influence
on culture, that the impact of the church on the world will be to bring blessing and
improvement to the human condition and to the human situation. Throughout history there will be an ongoing
positive influence of Christ and His church in the world. John Calvin, for example, taught that the
supreme task of the church between its beginning and its consummation at the end of time is
to bear witness to the invisible reign of Christ. He said it is the task of the church to make
the invisible kingdom visible. You recall that when Jesus left this planet
the very last question that was asked Him by His disciples was the question, "Lord,
will you now restore the kingdom to Israel?" And what did Jesus say? He didn't say 'How many times do I have to
tell you there's not going to be a kingdom for Israel? No. He said, "Look, those times are in My Father's
hands." And then He goes on to say, "But you shall
be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth." And what the amill position would be is that
they believe that it is the church's task to be witnesses to the invisible kingdom that
already exists. The Lord Jesus Christ reigns right now. He is the Lord of the earth. He is the King of kings, and we are in the
kingdom age, but the kingdom has not been consummated. Also the amill looks for a future apostasy
where towards the end of time the church will become corrupt, so corrupt that it will end
in a radical state of apostasy, which has not been seen in this degree even up to this
point in church history. And this is one of the reasons why many people
believe that we are entering the final hours of history, because of the widespread apostasy
of the Christian church that began with the advent of nineteenth century liberalism with
its agenda basically of unbelief. In any case they would say that this apostasy
will result then in a period of great suffering for those who are faithful to Christ and this
period of suffering will be called – is what they understand the tribulation to be
in which the Antichrist will become manifest at the end of time, and the saints will have
to endure great suffering during this period of the work of the Antichrist who will be
persecuting the people of God. And the church will not escape this period
of tribulation through some kind of pretribulation rapture. And then at the end of this period Christ
will return and triumph over the forces of evil and finish His work of redemption which
includes the renovation of all creation with the new heavens and the new earth. But all of this is taking place over an indefinite
period of time, that will not be a literal thousand years, because the amill position
is based upon the assumption that the millennium really began in the New Testament with the
triumph of Christ in His cross and resurrection and in His ascension. And so the thousand-year reign is an indefinite
period from the time Christ is inaugurated as king until whatever time in the future
He comes back, whether it's 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 or 4,000 years literally, that the millennium
is simply a symbolic representation of this parenthesis or this interim period. On the other hand you have the dispensational
form of premill eschatology where the dispensational view is that we are right now not in the kingdom
age but we are in the church age, and the church age represents a parenthesis between
the old covenant period and the coming of the kingdom. To the dispensationalist, the coming of the
kingdom is completely future. This is one of the things that created so
much controversy over understanding, for example, Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Some, if not most classical dispensationalists
believe that the ethic taught by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount has no relevance to
the contemporary church, but it is a kingdom ethic that will only be implemented at the
end of the time after Christ comes back when He will establish His kingdom. Also the premill position, as I indicated
already, views two distinct programs in redemptive history – one for Israel and one for the
church. So all the Old Testament prophecies and many
of the New Testament prophecies that talk about, for example, the Antichrist appearing,
the man of lawlessness appearing in the temple, and so on. The dispensationalists look for a future of
the people of Israel after the church is out of the world where the temple will be rebuilt,
the sacrifices will be reinstituted and God will – and Christ will come and convert
the Jews to Himself. But there will be a redemptive plan for the
Jews that is distinct from the redemptive plan of the church, and the church is not
the new Israel. The church is a different institution from
Israel. So many of the Old Testament prophecies that
look toward the future redemption of Israel, according to Dispensationalism, are not in
anyway fulfilled in the New Testament church, but they still await their final fulfillment
as God works with the Jews. And as I said, Dispensationalism looks for
this pretribulation rapture, and at the end there will be a thousand-year reign at the
time that Christ comes back, and again followed by after that 1,000 years the victory over
Satan, but Satan will not have been bound until that thousand-year reign comes. Now, the postmillennial position, which differs
from these others believes that the church again is Israel. They share that idea with the amill position,
but that the kingdom of God is a kingdom of spiritual redemption and is not a program
of earthly or political transformation. However, the postmill position of all of the
positions is the one most optimistic with respect for the church's influence on society,
that the influence of the church on society will be transforming and as the Great Commission
succeeds there will be great blessing in the world as a result of the proclamation of the
gospel and the impact of the church, and after a thousand years, a literal thousand years
of this, Jesus will return at the end of the thousand-year period with the final judgment. So for most postmillennialists the thousand-year
reign of Christ has not yet begun, but it will be ushered in and be manifesting a major
victory of the influence of Christianity on the world. And so that the power of the gospel and the
power of the church will get greater and greater and greater rather than smaller than smaller
than smaller. And so some people in various types of postmill
position have almost looked for a kingdom of God on earth for a subsequent and substantive
period of time in which these things take place. Now, with respect to historic premillennialism
– and we've made a distinction between premillennialism and dispensationalists' premillennialism,
because within eschatological theories, this distinction exists. There is a classical doctrine of premill that
differs at certain points from Dispensationalism. Dispensationalism as a movement began in the
nineteenth century though it claims to be simply recovering the true biblical eschatology
and the eschatology of the early church. But throughout history there have always been
those who maintained that Christ would come back before the millennial and would establish
a kingdom for a thousand years after which there would be the great tribulation and the
final battle. In this view, the historic view of premill,
is that the New Testament era church is the initial phase of Christ's kingdom as had been
prophesied by Old Testament prophecy. Second of all, that the New Testament church
will win occasional victories in history, but ultimately will fail in her mission, lose
influence, and become corrupt to the point of apostasy as worldwide wickedness and corruption
increases at the end of the church age. Then the church will pass through a world
– a future worldwide unprecedented time of tribulation and travail. This, of course, is known as the period of
the great tribulation. And that will punctuate the end of contemporary
history as we know it. And then after the tribulation Christ will
return to rapture His church, resurrect the departed saints, and conduct the judgment
of the righteous all within the twinkling of an eye. And then Christ will descend to the earth
with His glorified saints, fight the battle of Armageddon, bind Satan, establish a worldwide
political kingdom which will be personally administered by Jesus for a thousand years,
and His headquarters, of course, will be in Jerusalem. And then at the end of this millennial reign,
Satan will be loosed, and another massive rebellion against the kingdom and against
Christ will occur. Then God will intervene in fiery judgment
to rescue Christ and the saints, and then the final resurrection and final judgment
will occur and the eternal order of history will be ushered in. And so these different views are, you know,
shorthand described in terms of their relationship to this thousand-year period. Again, to recapitulate – the amill position
is that the millennium is not a literal thousand-year reign. The other three positions do have a literal
thousand-year reign. There is the thousand-year reign of the historic
premillennialism that takes place, as we just read, at a future point in which Christ will
reign for a thousand years on the earth. Satan will be bound; then he'll be released
for a season; the battle of Armageddon takes place and so on. The postmillenarian view sees a thousand-year
period of great prosperity for the church that has still not yet come, and when it comes
Christ will reign through that thousand-year period of great benefit for the whole world,
and then after that there will be this tribulation, and the Antichrist, and all of these sort
of things. And so I think you get some feel for this,
and with – where the preterists fall out obviously, is that the full preterists don't
believe in a millennium; I mean, it's already taken place. And the partial preterists tend, but not all,
tend to fall into the camp of the postmill position, that – or the amill position,
but most of them are postmill, and still see future prophecies left to be fulfilled, but
they have an optimistic view of the influence of the church in history. Now, the reason why there are these competing
positions of amill, postmill, Dispensationalism, historic premill, preterist, and all the rest,
is because it is so difficult to know with precision and with certainty the exact references
of future prophecies. And that's why the greatest minds in the church
continue to examine these prophecies. We don't have the benefit of hindsight, which
is 20/20, and we want to be always vigilant and always alert watching the course of history
as we are taking seriously the future prophecies of sacred Scripture.
