The Meaning of the Millennium
Part 3 of an Introduction to Eschatology
It is now time to line up the different views on the millennium. To keep things simple, notice how the prefixes “pre” and “post” refer immediately to the return of Christ. That is, they position the return of Christ in its sequential relationship to the millennium. Jesus will return either before the millennium (Premillennialism) or after the millennium (Postmillennialism). Now Amillennialism says that the millennium has no (hence the prefix “a”) such literal relationship to the timeline, or at least not “down on” the timeline. The thousand years is figurative in Amillennialism.
Notice also that for both the Amillennialist and the Postmillennialist, the return of Christ is after this particular reign of Christ. In that sense both positions are “post-millennial.” If that isn’t confusing enough, many postmillennialists have actually resigned themselves to a less literal rendering of those thousand years.
It would seem, then, that all Amillennialists are really “post,” and that many Postmillennialists are really “a.” Surely there must be more to their disagreement, right? Well, yes, in fact there is.
Postmillennialists will place greater emphasis on the advance of the kingdom on earth. That means that the gospel will have unprecedented success at this time. The adjectives “optimistic” and “pessimistic” are often used for this reason—the former for Postmillennialists and the latter for Amillennialists. Such labels can only go so far in terms of explanation. However, there has been a noted tendency among Amillennialists over the past century to place all of the emphasis of Christ’s reign upon his headship over the church and our imitation of his state of humiliation while on earth, rather than of his state of exaltation, which will be ours at the kingdom’s consummation.
Some Amillennialists are quick to charge Postmillennialists with trying to usher in a whole kingdom without its King (indeed Premillennialists will sometimes say the same), while Postmillennialists will answer right back that Amillennialists demote Christ from the throne now, at least insofar as he is only made Head of the church, but not Lord over all cultures and earthly domains. Still others seek to avoid the extremes that they recognize of their own views, so that some will call themselves “optimistic Amillennialists,” and many Postmillennialists are keen to qualify their expectations that it is the changed hearts that the gospel brings that do the job and not political or other institutional might.
There is one other introductory ground to clear with respect to millennial positions. There is an important difference between Historical Premillennialism and Dispensational Premillennialism. While the historic position was held by several of the earliest church fathers, its perspective was really confined to this matter we have been discussing. How do the second coming of Christ and his kingdom reign stand in relation to each other on the timeline? It should be added that it was not only the likes of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus who held this view, but in the twentieth century, James Montgomery Boice and George Eldon Ladd also taught it.
In the nineteenth century a new view emerged that cuts into the very fabric of redemptive history. It is more than an eschatological position. It is a challenge to traditional hermeneutics as a whole.
Dispensationalism began to divide the Bible into seven basic “dispensations” or periods of God dealing differently with man, based on how man performed in the previous era. At its heart it seeks to take God’s promises to Abraham “literally”—of course, literally comes to mean materially—with respect to offspring, nation, land, and other blessings.
As such, it cannot accept that those promises are fundamentally fulfilled in Christ for the whole church, as an inheritance of all things. There are extreme forms of Dispensationalism that are frankly heretical. Describing that would exceed our study.
What matters in order to understand how this view has revolutionized eschatology in the modern era is that the Dispensationalists make a solid and impenetrable line between Israel and the church. The church age is referred to as a “parentheses” in God’s plan, until the “times of the Gentiles” comes to its close and God turns back in favor upon the Jews. Texts like Daniel 9:24-27 and Romans 11 weigh heavily in this discussion, and it is taken for granted that there will be a rapture in which the saints of the past will rise and living believers will be caught up to be with Jesus, after which a seven year tribulation separates this event and the “Glorious Appearing” of Christ, which will then usher in the literal thousand year reign.
In both forms of Premillennialism, the literal thousand year reign in which Jesus reigns and rules on earth is interrupted by Satan’s last rebellion. All three millennial positions have an explanation for this letting loose of Satan at the end of the period, from Revelation 20:3.
However, the Premillennial position is distinguished in that Christ must be literally present on earth already when he crushes that final rebellion. In the Amillennial and Postmillennial views, Christ comes from heaven to crush that rebellion. Although the Premillennialist will often balk at this language, the notion of a seven-year tribulation period in between rapture and Glorious Appearing implies a second-second coming of Christ. To be fair, even a growing number of Dispensational Premillennialists have questioned the notion of a pretribulational rapture in recent years. That at least comes closer to a realism about what “the” tribulation means.
The majority of theologians throughout church history would have understood the “rapture” and the “second resurrection” as two aspects of one event, namely, on the Last Day, when Jesus returns to execute a judgment all at once. At that point he calls forth the righteous and the wicked from their tombs on the same day. Such a traditional interpretation could appeal to John 5:29.
Obviously there are too many loose ends at this point to even begin to address. It is not my purpose to rule on the millennial question just yet. We begin at the grammar stage of eschatology.
(To be continued)
