Have you ever heard the statement that one should not take a single scripture or passage in the Bible and make a doctrine out of it? Thats why there is disagreement over millennial theories. The reign of a thousand years of Christ is mentioned six times in one passage in Revelation 20. The prefixes postmil, amil and premil are only about 200 years old. Prior to that time there were two views: 1. Chiliasm or Millennarianism was held by a minority of Christians at least as early as the second century. This view is looking for a literal 1000 year reign of Christ on earth after the Second Coming and a physical kingdom of God. This later became known as the premillennial view. 2. The Common Church View has held that there is no physical manifestation of the kingdom on earth. This became known later as amillennialism. They argued that everywhere in scripture the kingdom of God is spiritual not physical. By the time of the 1600s, this Common View split into two camps, the progressive millennarians or postmilliennialists, were distinguished as those who said that the kingdom is heavenly, but there is a gradual, growing physical manifestation of the kingdom on earth in history. There were postmillennialists prior to that, but it just never had a name. You can see a doctrine of earthly victory for the kingdom in On the Incarnation by Athanasius in the fourth century, and in the City of God by St. Augustine in the fifth century, for instance. By way of support for a thousand as a metaphor: In Revelation, John is obsessed with sevens. Hell use an important word up to seven times and then the eighth time, hell use another word. There are several examples of this, but one of them is Kingdom of God. In Revelation, we see basileia (Kingdom) used exactly seven times. (Look it up.) Then John shifts and uses the Reign or kerygma of God in Revelation 20. Both mean the same thing. The word thousand is often used throughout the Bible to mean a multitude and not a literal thousand. God promises to show love to the Hebrews for thousands of generations -- and so on. So if you are a postmillennialist, you believe the reign of Christ on earth has already come, but the throne of Christ is still in heaven. During the millennial reign Satan is bound from deceiving the nations and we can expect the Gospel to diffuse the whole world. Christ will remain in heaven until the Great Commission is fulfilled. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death (1 Cor 15:25,26). Note that Rev 20 does not indicate where Christs throne actually is during the millennium. John does tell of a general apostasy at the very END of the millennial period and a final battle that occurs when Satan is let loose. Postmillennialists hold that this final rebellion is the separation of the wheat from the chaff and that the Second Coming, the General Resurrection and the Final Judgment occur at this time.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 01:08:13 +0000
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