Part 1： An Introduction to Eschatology
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Summary
In this sermon, Pastor Ken teaches on the concept of eschatology, the doctrine, and the views of the three views on the future reign of Christ in the millennial reign of the church. Is this topic worth talking about? Should we spend our time talking about complicated issues or should we focus on the gospel? Shouldn t we just proclaim the gospel and not worry about those things that are so difficult to understand?
Transcript
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So, eschatology, does it really matter? You might ask if this topic is worth us talking about.
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Should we really spend time talking about complicated issues? Is this something that we
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should be spending our mind's energy discussing? Shouldn't we just focus on the gospel? Shouldn't
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we proclaim the cross of Christ and not worry about those things that are so difficult to
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understand? That's one of the common challenges around eschatology, and it's why the vast majority
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of Christians don't want to have these harder discussions. We like to kind of sit in the
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shallow end of the pool when it comes to theology rather than going into the deep end,
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talking about difficult categories of the scriptures.
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Eschatology will impact you far more than you realize.
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It actually shapes the way that you live and the way that you think.
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I told you just a little bit ago that we had a family in our church
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who at one point in their life made the decision to not have children based on their eschatology.
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They had a pessimistic eschatology that told them that the world is only going to get worse
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and that the Antichrist is coming, the tribulation is before us.
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Let's be loving and not bring a child into this.
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That family has come on their own to repentance and has informed us last year
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that they had come to that conclusion and conviction, and they had come to a different
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eschatology. But it was a painful mistake based off of what they believed. And so eschatology
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will, again, shape the way you view family and legacy and ministry and cultural and political
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engagement and the way that you talk about law and the way that you think about media and business
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and all the things that are going on in the economics, the geopolitical world.
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It affects how you spend your time, how you invest your money, the view you have of future.
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And again, I want to make it clear, you have an eschatology.
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I'm not giving you something that you don't have right now.
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Now, you already have a developed or underdeveloped or uninformed or ignorant eschatology.
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Now today, what I want to discuss is an introduction to the concept, to theology, the doctrine, the discussions of eschatology.
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and there's really three views historic premillennialism amillennialism and
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postmillennialism now most teaching series on eschatology are going to be somewhere between
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three and 24 months i'm going to try to do a brief introduction in about six weeks
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and so we're not going to be getting to some of the more complex issues but my hope is threefold
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today. I want to offer a basic lay of the land, a basic lay of the land that will help you
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understand the fundamentals of all three views. And again, I've made you this diagram to assist
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that. I want you to not be ignorant about what each particular view believes and that you could
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make an informed decision based on your interpretation of Scripture. Number two,
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I'd like to introduce to our congregation the eschatological view that we hold as pastors
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here at Kingsway. And number three, I want to demonstrate the difference between pessimistic
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eschatology and optimistic eschatology, because I believe that impacts us more than you know.
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And so, the three views. Let's start this off. You might notice that all three views center
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around this term millennium. Millennium, which revolves around this passage of Scripture in
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Revelation 20, verses 1 through 7. We had just read that prior to this sermon. Now, the word
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millennium is made up of two Latin words, mille and enum. Mille means a thousand, and enum means
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year. So it literally means a thousand year. Now, it's used six times in the Bible, and all of those
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six times are in the first seven verses of chapter 20 in the book of Revelation. That word is never
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used anywhere else. Now that passage is referring to the millennial reign of Christ, which is a
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period of Christ's sovereign rule where he's going to be reigning on earth, his kingdom is going to
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be expanding, and it results in the ultimate defeat of evil and the closing of the redemptive
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era of history. So the question becomes, and this is key, when and how does the millennial reign of
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Christ occur? When and how does the millennial reign of Christ occur? Does Christ return before
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his millennial reign in his temporal body, his physical body, that's premillennial,
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If Christ returns before the millennium, that's pre-millennium, pre-millennial.
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Or does Christ return after his millennial reign, which occurs through his body, the church, not his temporal body, but his body, the church on earth?
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That is, will Christ come in his physical body, which we all agree, by the way, he'll eventually come in his physical body.
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But as it pertains to the millennium, will Christ come in his physical body to fully inaugurate, start his kingdom for a literal 1,000 year reign on the earth?
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or will Christ come to consummate an already existing kingdom
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and has been building on earth through his body, the church?
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Those are the two distinctions between premillennialists and postmillennialists.
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which is called amillennialism, which teaches that the millennium is not a future physical
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reign of Christ on earth, either in his physical body, nor in his body, the church,
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reigning on earth, but a present spiritual reign from heaven, that God is reigning in the hearts
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of believers, but it's not really his body operating his kingdom on earth. Now, in this view,
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the millennial reign, the amillennial view, refers to Christ's rule over his church during the current
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church age. They don't want to call it the millennium, though they might call it a symbolic
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millennium, which began at his resurrection and will continue until his final return at the end
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of history. That's kind of, you can see that on the chart there. In amillennialism, there is no
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expectation of a literal 1,000-year earthly reign, but rather it's a symbolic period where Satan is
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bound. Jesus says that he has bound the strong man. This period is where the gospel will spread
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and Christ reigns spiritually through his people. They would view it almost as what's called a two
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kingdom theology. There is the spiritual kingdom and there is the kingdom of the world. And
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amillennialists don't believe that our job is to affect the kingdom of the world, but just focus
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on the spiritual kingdom. That's 2K, sometimes what it's called, or R2K theology. And it's kind
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of an impotent theology. It doesn't affect the physical world much at all. Now, the key differences
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are that post-millennialists do not view Christ's reign as merely spiritual. It's not just a
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spiritual thing. They view Christ ruling the earth through his body, the church. And we believe,
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as a post-millennialist, that it will impact every area of life, including the geopolitical
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realities of the world. Try to let your Christianity not affect anything else.
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It's impossible, in fact, unless you're unfaithful.
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Christianity will come out of your fingers.
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Now, most importantly, post-millennialists believe Christ's reign through the church
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will result in the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Christianization of the world.
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Ultimately, amillennialism and post-millennialism are actually very similar.
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they're much different than premillennialism, the structure and framework for premillennialism.
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But amillennialism and postmillennialism are very similar. In fact, I would argue that
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amillennialism is the seed which the full-grown tree of postmillennialism came. So postmillennialism
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comes out of amillennialism. It is like the version of it that has bite. It takes the promises
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of scripture and it makes them stick. Postmillennialism is kind of a stronger and
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potent version of amillennialism. Now, to be clear, all three views, pre, ah, and post,
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all Christian Orthodox. They all believe the gospel. They all trust in Christ. They all
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believe that Christ will return in a future visible bodily form and that there will be a
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resurrection of the dead, saints and sinners out of their graves, great judgment, beam a seat,
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great white throne, the restoration of the new heavens and the new earth, and the eternal state.
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All three of those positions are considered to be orthodox.
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Now, where they differ is on four central points.
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number two whether Christ's kingdom is already established or still to come
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number three how Christ's millennial reign is exercised on earth either through his body the
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church or his temporal body and four if the world will get better through the advancement of the
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gospel, or worse, through the influence of the devil. Okay, that is where the fight around
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eschatology is hot, those four areas. So again, the three views, premillennialism, amillennialism,
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and postmillennialism, I want to look at each of them briefly, and then we will move into optimistic
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and pessimistic eschatology. So, pre-millennialism. Christ returns before
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his physical earthly millennial reign on earth for a thousand years.
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Now, with pre-millennialism, you have two camps. You have historic pre-millennialism,
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and you have what is called dispensational premillennialism, which I believe to be an error.
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In fact, I would say most theologians today believe it to be an error. Now, it's hard to
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say in America because we have a lot of dispensational theologians in America. But I'm
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going to break down both of them and tell you why I think that dispensationalism is not within
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orthodoxy, but I think that historic premillennialism is. Now, historic premillennialism
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teaches that Christ will return before the establishment of a literal 1,000-year reign
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on earth. In this view, Christ's second coming marks the beginning of the millennium,
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during which he will physically reign in a restored kingdom. And in this view,
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there is a resurrection of the damned, which they will be resurrected to judgment and then cast into
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hell. That's the difference between the Bema seat judgment of the righteous and the white throne
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judgment of the wicked. This was the prominent view of the early church, probably for the first
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three or four hundred years of the early church, historic
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And it was held by Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian,
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We have men like modern era, John Piper, Wayne Grudem,
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that will hold to historic premillennialism. Now, it's called historic because it aims to
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differentiate itself from dispensational premillennialism. Now, again, I believe that
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dispensationalism is a perversion of premillennialism, and we'll talk about that in a second.
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different. Dispensationalism was birthed in the 19th century. You never heard that doctrine
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prior to the 19th century. And it was through the teachings of a man named John Nelson Darby.
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And it was popularized in the Schofield Study Bible that became basically America's Bible.
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and is the theology that is held by Calvary Chapel, by, you know, even John MacArthur on eschatology,
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by most of the megachurches who hold this position.
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And John Nelson Darby was a part of what's called the Plymouth Brethren movement.
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Now, if you don't know your church history, in the mid to late 1800s is the birth of all the cults.
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So Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Church of Christ, Seventh-day Adventists, all of that, and I would include dispensationalism,
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came out of this cultic movement in the mid to late 1800s.
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Now, the way it distinguishes itself between historic premillennialism is several ways.
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And I'm going to talk about, I think, four of them.
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Number one, it has a wooden manner of interpretation.
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Dispensationalists emphasize this really hard, literal interpretation of apocalyptic literature.
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Apocalyptic literature is like prophetic end times literature.
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Now, this poses a problem when you're interpreting passages like Daniel 4 through 19, or Matthew 24, or the book of Revelation.
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Historic premillennialists, as well as amillennialists and postmillennialists,
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they allow for a more symbolic or figurative form of interpretation of biblical prophecy because of the particular genre that it's in.
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For example, you do not interpret poetry in the same way that you interpret law.
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it would be very difficult to do so. And that's the kind of claim that people make against
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dispensationalists, is that they are using a wooden type of interpretation on a poetic or
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apocalyptic or prophetic form of literature. Number two, dispensationalists believe in a
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distinct separation between ethnic Israel and the church. Now, they view Israel and the church as
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having separate covenants, fulfillments, and destinies. Okay, this is a totally different
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framework than anything you've ever seen in church history. They, again, historic pre-millennialism
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and the other views see the church as being included or continuing the fulfillment of God's
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promises to Israel. Now, here's the real divide. Dispensationalists view the church age as a
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parenthetical period. Pay attention here. A parenthetical period in God's plan that kind of
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postponed the original intention of the Jewish or Davidic kingdom. So there's a kingdom that's
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promised to David. From your line will be birthed an everlasting kingdom of the line of Judah.
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Well, Jesus comes and he's born and he is this Davidic king. Well, dispensationalism believes
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that because the Jews rejected the Davidic king, that Jesus essentially took a temporary detour
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to rescue the Gentiles. It was this kind of parenthetical eschatological plan. It was
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supposed to go just to the Jews, but because they were rejected, Jesus as this Davidic king,
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We're going to go and focus on the Gentiles, which is called the church age.
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And then we will resume that plan of the Davidic Jewish kingdom at the millennium.
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It disconnects the church and Israel into two separate peoples of God.
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And as a result, dispensationalists hold that ethnic Jews will remain distinct, not just now on earth, but into eternity.
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And that they will hold some degree of prominence, some would even argue superiority, over the church.
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and this is the eschatology of america unfortunately it did not used to be but for the
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last hundred years this has been the prominent eschatology of the united states and it's why
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america is so oddly obsessed with israel we are obsessed with israel more than any other nation
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on earth, by the way. It's why we created terms like Judeo-Christian. That term was never used
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before. Think about that term, Judeo-Christian. It's almost as strange as something like
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Muslim-Christian. Okay, Judaism hates Christ. Go to a Talmudic Jew and ask him what he thinks of
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Jesus. I just saw a rabbi that converted to Christianity, and he posted out, I have
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Jews that have converted to Buddhism. Nobody cares. I know Jews that have converted to New
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Ageism. Nobody cares. I have Jews that have become atheists. Nobody cares. But I become a
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Christian, he says to Yeshua, and my family tears their clothes and have funerals for me.
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No, Judaism hates Christianity, true Judaism.
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Jesus would never approve of the term Judeo-Christian.
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He, you know, Paul talks about this idea of true Jews.
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He talks about this idea of true Israel, that there are people who are in Israel that are not
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of Israel. Jesus is a true Israelite. In fact, you know what? In a spiritual sense,
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we who believe are also Israelites, true Israelites. We are those that have inherited
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The most troubling part about dispensationalism is the implication that God has two brides.
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Israel is the bride of God in the Old Testament.
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If the church is not the fulfillment of Israel, and there are two groups, then God, theologically, in the dispensational framework, is a polygamist.
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He has two brides, the church and the nation of Israel.
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this is just touching the surface of the systematic incoherency of the dispensational
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framework number three dispensationalists believe in a secret pre-tribulation rapture
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this is kind of the left behind doctrine that teaches that a secret pre-tribulation rapture
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of the church, which, again, has no clear support in Scripture and was virtually an unknown idea
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prior to the 19th century. There is no two-stage coming of Christ in the Bible. There's not one
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secret coming and grabbing for Jesus, grabbing the church, taking him up out of the seven-year
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tribulation, and then bringing them back with him to reign on the earth. That takes some interesting
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interpretive gymnastics to arrive at that conclusion. Secondly, nowhere does the Bible
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promise believers are going to escape tribulation, but rather it promises that the Christians will
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endure it by the power of the Holy Spirit. Number four, dispensationalists believe in
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multiple dispensations and reject covenant theology. Okay, dispensationalism fractures
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the redemptive history of the Old Testament and New Testament into seven distinct dispensations.
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And they're each marked by a distinct way that God relates to humanity.
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it's a completely new and novel framework and it again isolates israel from the church
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now this framework conflicts with the long-standing covenantal framework
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and one people of God that are all saved by grace
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Either the Christ to come from the Old Testament
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now amillennialism so we have understand premillennialism has historic premillennialism
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and dispensational premillennialism one historic premillennialism will align
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with the general systematics of amillennialism and postmillennialism
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dispensationalism is kind of in its own category it's very different from history
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of the church and from the systematic nature of covenant theology and the gospel.
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Now, amillennialism is that there is no literal 1,000-year reign on the earth.
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The name amillennial gets its name because it uses the prefix a, a.
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So if you believe in God and you believe there's a God, you are a theist.
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If you don't believe in God and there is no God, you are called an atheist, an atheist.
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It means that you do not believe that there is a physical, literal 1,000-year reign.
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now amillennialists like post-millennialists do not believe in this literal 1000 year millennium
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reign but rather they interpret it as a symbolic uh symbolic language for a long period of time
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now you might go well should we take the scripture literally well yes if we're reading
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law or epistles or history, but we're reading prophetic language. You cannot
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read it literally. Try to read it literally, and you're going to have all types of weird conclusions.
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For example, in the Old Testament, it says that God is the God of the cattle of a thousand hills.
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Does that mean that God is not the God of the cattle on a thousand and one hills?
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No, of course he's the God of all the cattle on all the hills.
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No, that term expresses a poetic way of saying all of them.
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in the same way amillennialists understand the thousand years in revelation 20
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not as a precise time frame but as a figurative description for a long period of time we might
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even say in our own life it's been going on for millennia right well it could be used as a
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framework it's just been going on forever for a long time specifically that reference is between
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the crucifixion resurrection and his final return to earth that period is where
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amillennialists and post-millennialists will go oh that's just the symbolic millennium
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the church age the gospel era whatever you want to call it there is no literal 1,000 year reign
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now there is a group of post-millennials that do believe in about a thousand year thing I'll tell
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you about that in a minute now amillennialists really became popular in about the year three
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or 400 under the teachings of Augustine. Augustine started interpreting Revelation
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with a, I think, a fair, symbolic, hermeneutic, and interpretive principles. And he wrote a book
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called The City of God. And that book became extremely influential. And it ended up becoming
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the most widely held position in church history. So there has been vastly more
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amillennials than premillennials or post-millennials.
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You know, an amillennial would say, well, if the premillennials are pessimistic
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and the post-millennials are optimistic, then the amillennials are realistic, right? That's what
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they would say, right? Oh, we're the middle ground. We're the balanced ones. We're there,
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you know? And so, but amillennialism is where the vast majority of church history finds itself.
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Both the Roman Catholic Church is amillennial in their framework, and even reformers who I would
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argue are optimistic amillennials, like Calvin or Luther, would hold those positions as well.
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There's lots of great theologians today that are amillennial.
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But again, I would call them, well, I'd call Votie optimistic amillennial.
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Now, because amillennialism is similar to postmillennialism,
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I want to just give you a few distinct features about amillennialism.
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Unlike postmillennialism, amillennialism does not expect a future age of worldwide gospel prosperity or a Christianized world.
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They believe that the church will continue its mission amid triumphs and trials.
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History will generally decline with greater and greater opposition as the gospel spreads, which is super weird to me.
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And apostasy, the great apostasy will come as the end approaches and that essentially it's going to get worse.
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Generally, that's what an amillennial would believe.
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They have still what I would call a pessimistic eschatology.
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Now, number two is amillennials believe Christ's reign is present, but it's spiritual.
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They believe that Christ is reigning now, that there is a kingdom now,
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unlike the premillennials who don't believe there is a kingdom now.
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There's a pending kingdom, but not a real kingdom.
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All millennials believe that Christ is reigning from heaven in the hearts of believers, spiritually.
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And it's invisible, it's exercised through the word and the sacraments and the church,
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but it's not focused on the other kingdoms of the world.
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It's one kingdom, again, it's the two-kingdom theology,
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but they're focusing only on the spiritual kingdom.
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it doesn't actually manifest itself in the world in any way it's post-millennialism without teeth
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it's impotent post-millennialism that's what i always say is that it's it doesn't actually
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say that it doesn't think that your theology will affect your life in any way
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so again you can see that both pre-millennialists and the classic amillennial amillennialists not
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that not the optimistic type they expect cultural defeat they believe that we as the church will
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lose down here now you guys know because i say it all the time that there is no paradigm
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in which the church can lose? One, all authority has been given to Christ in heaven and on earth
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and the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. Those things have to be false
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if the church loses. The second thing is that if Jesus is the head and we are the body,
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we rise and fall together. You cannot have a defeated losing church and a winning Christ
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as the head no if the church loses you are a christ loses if your wife loses you lose
00:36:06.380
you're one so there is no paradigm in which we can lose unless christ loses with us
00:36:16.020
which doesn't make any sense with any of the passages of scripture in the new testament
00:36:21.740
we do not lose down here as John MacArthur said a couple years ago and I love John MacArthur
00:36:29.140
man he's an incredible man but I think he gets this wrong
00:36:34.120
so pre-millennialists and classic amillennialists have pessimistic eschatology that's why you see
00:36:46.320
the down arrow on that diagram there. And as I said earlier, I believe amillennialism
00:36:52.760
and postmillennialism are similar. They're very similar in their structure.
00:36:58.300
I think, again, that people that are optimistic amillennial are actually postmillennial.
00:37:05.920
They just don't want to say the word. It's like the people who are hard complementarians.
00:37:10.020
They're just biblical patriarchs. Just say the word. You're just afraid to identify yourself
00:37:14.200
that way because of the cultural context of it. No. Abigail Adams once said, the middle way
00:37:21.840
is no way. And I really believe that is true. We love these middle places. That's where the
1.00
00:37:28.300
vast majority of people sit. And so you have egalitarianism, you have complementarianism,
00:37:34.160
and then you have biblical patriarchy. And where does the vast majority of the church go?
00:37:38.320
Right in the middle. It's convenient because I can kind of touch hands over here when it's
00:37:42.940
convenient, and I can touch hands over here when it's convenient. And the same with eschatology.
00:37:48.740
You have premillennialism. You have amillennialism, which gets to kind of go, oh, I'm kind of a little
00:37:54.460
pessimistic today. I'm going to go kind of with my premill buddies. Oh, you know what? Roe v. Way
00:37:59.440
got overturned. I'm going to be a little optimistic right now. I'm going to go hang with my postmill
00:38:04.160
friends. Okay, it's the middle. Just be postmill if you're optimistic. If you're optimistic about
0.71
00:38:11.460
just the fact that the gospel is going to actually convert people all of us believe that but how are
00:38:17.180
you optimistic are you optimistic in the sense that it'll actually affect the culture well then
00:38:22.540
you're just a mild post mill and so that's the difference there between these positions now i
00:38:29.340
want to talk about post-millennialism christ returns after the millennium now what we don't
00:38:37.760
believe in a millennium. Well, we do. We believe in a symbolic millennium that Christ is ruling
00:38:43.740
for that millennium, but he's ruling in his body, which is the church. And so there really is an
00:38:51.640
earthly reign, a millennial reign. It's earthly. It's just happening through his church, the body
00:39:00.080
of Christ. So post-millennialism, in my opinion, is the most potent, culturally engaged,
00:39:07.760
Jewish evangelistic view because it expects the gospel to triumph in history. It expects it
00:39:15.020
because we have a victorious Christ. We will have a victorious eschatology.
00:39:21.060
You know who could have been, you know, you had every reason to be pessimistic prior to Christ.
00:39:26.720
Okay, before the cross, you had every reason to be pessimistic. You want to go be a pessimistic
00:39:32.300
eschatology, 300 BC, totally expected. Without Christ coming, it's going to get worse.
00:39:43.080
But this side of the cross, Christ conquering the grave, it is extremely strange for Christians to
00:39:51.860
be pessimistic. We have a victorious Christ who conquered everything. All authority has been given
00:39:58.460
to him in heaven and on earth. How does, how do you lose? How does Christ lose?
00:40:08.860
I think that post-millennialism compels believers to disciple the nations.
00:40:17.100
It views every sphere of life is subject to the lordship of Christ, and it's working
00:40:25.520
to build the kingdom because we are in the millennium and we are doing kingdom work
00:40:33.260
that Christ is accomplishing through us. Now, as I said, post-millennialism finds its roots
00:40:39.460
in amillennialism. But the term post-mill and kind of the defined framework didn't really come
00:40:48.300
into play until about the 1600s. And I say that because it was about the same time that everybody
00:40:55.420
had their own Bible. You could finally start reading the scriptures in your own language
00:40:59.540
and you go, oh, there's actually this amillennial view. Maybe there's actually more optimism that
00:41:07.240
we should give it. The vast majority of the Puritans were post-millennial. Most of the
0.97
00:41:17.420
Reformed theologians, including John Owen, Jonathan Edwards. Almost every early American
00:41:26.720
colonist and settler is post-mill. I mean, if you want to know why we have the country we have,
0.85
00:41:32.280
it's because of post-millennial eschatology. Why is America a Christian nation? It's because of
0.99
00:41:37.500
their eschatology. Why do they even come here? It's because of their eschatology. If you read
00:41:42.520
anything from the 16, 17, or 1800s from American pastors, you're going to see post-millennial,
00:41:49.300
post-millennial, post-millennial. Now, the reason it shifted is because John Nelson Darby's influence
00:41:56.020
and you had the Civil War, and that felt like, wow, it's just going to get worse.
00:42:01.560
And then you had World War I, and then you had the Great Depression, and then you had World War II,
00:42:16.680
and it was almost impossible for anybody to say,
00:42:26.920
and you start looking at history in about 500-year chunks
00:42:30.780
and not myopically in around an 80-year period,
00:42:36.540
think about it like the stock market if you look at the stock market in the last couple weeks it's
00:42:43.300
not good but if you zoom out and you look at it over the last 10 years it's trending upward
00:42:51.660
and that's very similar to church history if you go into 1943 world history you go wow
00:43:31.580
It will follow the same pattern that it has followed for 2,000 years.
0.90
00:43:35.420
It will get more and more and more Christianized.
0.97
00:43:41.480
Because the Great Commission will be fulfilled.
00:43:45.760
It's by the strength of the Holy Spirit, by the head who is Christ, and by the power of the gospel.
00:43:56.900
optimistic this is a distinction of post-millennialism they have an optimistic
00:44:02.560
view of history post-millennialists believe the gospel will advance through the world
00:44:08.540
gradually transforming individuals cultures and nations we believe that will happen
00:44:17.360
this confidence is rooted in christ's present authority in heaven and on earth in the great
00:44:23.700
commission. The promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. The nature
00:44:28.060
of the kingdom described in Matthew 13, that it is like a mustard seed that starts out small
00:44:33.380
and that it'll grow incrementally over and become eventually the biggest plant in the garden or the
00:44:42.060
biggest kingdom of all the kingdoms. Or that the kingdom of God is like leaven, it says in Matthew
00:44:48.020
13 and that it will leaven the whole lump it will leaven the whole lump in other words
00:44:58.140
post-millennial people see God slowly sanctifying and redeeming the world gradually as he does with
00:45:10.560
you and me how does God sanctify his people does he do it cataclysmically and all of a sudden
00:45:43.680
but in order that the world might be saved through him.
00:45:48.680
I believe truly that Jesus is going to save the world.
00:45:54.880
Now, do I believe that Jesus is going to save every single person?
00:46:00.880
I think that the vast majority of the world will be Christian when Jesus returns.
00:46:08.580
Now, the premillennialists often hold to this doctrine called the imminent return of Christ.
00:46:14.480
Now, I don't think that doctrine is orthodox
0.95
00:46:17.140
because for it to be true, it had to always be true.
00:46:24.140
So that means if the imminent return of Christ,
0.52
00:46:27.760
that means you should have been able to preach that
00:46:33.320
But that'd be ridiculous because he just told you,
00:46:43.300
You're like, well, I can't do that in my lifetime.
00:46:59.020
I think that there is a vast majority of the nation that needs to, or the world, that needs to be converted to Christ.
00:47:05.360
Now, let's just say that Christ did come back early.
00:47:11.760
I'm not going to argue if Christ comes back, hey, you know what, hey, I got work to do, you know.
00:47:17.400
You came back a little earlier, I didn't expect you here so soon.
00:47:21.740
No, the reality is that we should have a long-term view.
00:47:26.400
Now, if you view that Jesus is coming back in the next 60 years, which is like,
00:47:32.600
actually, I did a poll on Twitter maybe a year ago,
0.95
00:47:36.100
and I was shocked how many people, it was the majority,
00:47:43.060
believe that Jesus is coming back within the next 200 years.
00:47:47.580
And then I said, how many people do you think in the next 500 years?
00:47:50.500
How many people do you believe in the next 2,000 years?
00:47:56.980
But I really believe that it's going to be thousands of years before Christ returns.
00:48:05.340
I believe it's the tendency of every generation, which is proven in church history, to believe
00:48:17.560
There has been more predictions of the return of Christ than any other weird prediction
00:48:27.920
If you actually, I can't remember, but I think there was almost 2,000 predictions of the
00:48:32.880
return of Christ between the year 1600 to now. A lot of them have been documented. Now, the reality
00:48:40.200
is that let's just believe that Christ will come back. Nobody knows the hour or the day. Let's just
00:48:47.340
be found faithful, and let's work in a way that expects long-term work. Now, I'm going to give
00:48:55.900
you another example real quick. Think about how the Christians used to build churches.
0.94
00:49:06.560
I use this metaphor a lot because I think, or illustration a lot because it's helpful.
00:49:10.620
The churches that we used to build took between three and 600 years to build.
00:49:20.500
where the foundation is going to take you 60 years?
00:49:25.900
if you think that Christ is coming back in the next hundred.
00:49:31.340
No, they built cathedral after cathedral after cathedral,
00:49:41.560
because they did not view that Christ was going to be returning at any time soon.
00:49:45.900
They viewed that Christ is going to be returning many, many centuries ahead.
00:49:55.560
it says, all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the
00:50:00.800
nations shall worship before you. Just look at that passage of scripture. What do you do with that?
00:50:05.620
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord.
00:50:10.960
I believe that there will be a day where we have the vast majority of nations,
00:50:15.280
families of the earth, turning to the Lord. Number two, the golden era. Post-millennialists
00:50:21.020
believe that in time, the advancing of the gospel will lead to what theologians call
00:50:25.080
a golden era, a golden era. You can actually see it on the post-millennial sheet. Some interpret
00:50:34.760
that as a 1,000-year period. That's kind of a Puritan view of post-millennialism.
00:50:42.600
And this is including a time of world peace. There will be a revival of Jews in Israel that will be
00:50:54.260
part of the church and you get the expectation from passages of scripture like Isaiah 2. I want
00:51:03.940
you to turn there for a second. Isaiah 2. We're going to read verses 2 through 4. Isaiah 2 verses
00:51:12.360
2 through 4. And I'm going to read it to you here. It says, it shall come to pass
00:51:20.240
in the latter days okay latter days this is talking about a period of time prior to christ's
00:51:31.420
final return it shall come to pass in history is what it's saying it shall come to pass in the
00:51:39.520
latter days that the mountain of the house of the lord shall be established as the highest of the
00:51:46.780
mountains now again we're reading prophecy here so you can't just think that we're we can't use
00:51:52.620
that wooden literal interpretation this is prophetic hermeneutics that the mountain of
00:51:58.840
the house of the lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains and i'm i'm thinking
00:52:04.440
about this as kingdom okay and shall be lifted above the hills and all the nations shall flow
00:52:12.580
to it. Ooh, when will this happen? When in history, before the return of Christ, shall all
00:52:23.400
the nations flow to the house of the Lord? And it says in verse 3, and many peoples shall come and
00:52:32.440
say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob,
00:52:38.560
that he may teach us his ways the world is streaming to the kingdom of god wanting to know
00:52:47.500
the ways of god and it says that we and that we may walk in his paths oof okay it says for out of
00:52:58.880
zion shall go forth the law now what is the law the law is the word of god for out of zion out of
00:53:12.980
And it says, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
00:53:27.300
He says, for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
0.54
00:53:30.560
He shall judge through his law between the nations.
00:53:34.660
The word of the Lord will judge between the nations and shall decide disputes for many people.
00:53:40.120
The word of God will start to inform many people and it will start to fix problems in society.
00:53:48.920
And then it says, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
00:54:09.860
This is a prophecy talking about there will be a time
00:54:18.160
because of the word of God has brought conviction and clarity
00:54:31.740
As the gospel goes for the next centuries and millennia,
00:54:40.560
It goes on to say even that this will extend to nature.
00:54:50.800
that people will look down on the man that died at 100.
00:54:57.500
That as people are living to be the age of 200 or 300,
00:55:00.960
that we will go, oh, what a shame that he died so young.
00:55:05.660
There will be an advancement because of the Christian faith.
00:55:10.680
And you go, no, people used to live a long time, by the way,
00:55:33.080
and Jesus comes back and consummates the kingdom
00:55:46.380
I want my great-grandchildren to be better off than we are.
00:55:51.220
See, the dispensational framework and even the premillennial and amillennial framework says,
00:55:55.380
my great-grandchildren are going to have it way worse than me.
00:56:02.540
It's just going to get worse and worse, darker and darker, hopeless and more hopeless.
00:56:16.380
But when you view it with an optimistic framework, it changes everything.
00:56:23.060
The vision of a world progressively conquered by the word of God implies a coming age deserving at least the relative name golden,
00:56:32.280
a hope that stands in stark contrast to the gloom of other eschatologies, end quote.
00:56:42.280
Number three, Christ is reigning through his body, the church.
00:56:47.100
Like amillennials, post-millennials believe that Christ is reigning now from heaven,
00:56:52.660
but we believe his kingdom is advancing on earth through the church.
00:56:57.420
You're actually contributing to the kingdom, your work.
00:57:01.320
So again, unlike pre-millennialists, post-millennialists do not believe
00:57:05.040
or do not wait for Christ's physical return to build the kingdom.
00:57:09.280
We're not waiting for him to come back to start doing kingdom work.
00:57:18.820
And it's becoming bigger than all the other kingdoms of the world.
00:57:25.560
The kingdom of Christ is to extend over all the earth,
00:57:37.780
a prospect far brighter than the defeatism of other views.
00:57:45.120
And fourth, post-millennials have what's called a partial preteristic view of prophecy.
00:57:55.940
This is critical. I'm going to do an entire sermon on this.
00:57:59.760
Many post-millennialists hold to what is called partial preterism,
00:58:06.840
Partial preterism, which teaches that key prophetic passages like Matthew 24, much of Revelation, were fulfilled in the first century.
00:58:18.680
That those texts are speaking to the future of the audiences that they were written to, but they are in our past.
00:58:29.800
so Matthew 24 when it was written and Revelation when it was written was speaking of the future
00:58:37.700
but it has been fulfilled in our past specifically it's speaking to the events revolving around
00:58:47.700
the destruction of the old covenant era and the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD this is the position
00:58:56.420
that R.C. Sproul holds. This is the position that Doug Wilson holds, the position that I hold,
00:59:02.180
the position that most of the Puritans held. We interpret these texts, Matthew 24, Revelation are
00:59:09.320
great examples, as referring to these events like the Mark of the Beast would be referring to Nero
00:59:17.400
or seeing the Antichrist not as a future global tyrant but as a figure or a system that was in
00:59:25.120
the early church now this framework also allows and this is really the crux of the matter okay
00:59:31.960
why partial preterism is so important it allows post-millennialists to see the intense
00:59:39.420
apocalyptic events as already fulfilled in the past which frees us up the contemporary church
00:59:49.740
to focus not on surviving the end times chaos that's in our future,
00:59:55.620
but on advancing the gospel and building the kingdom of Christ over the generations.
01:00:05.740
So if I could sum up these three views of the kingdom,
01:00:09.480
I would say premillennialists believe the kingdom is pending, but not yet.
01:00:15.180
amillennialists believe the kingdom is already but not really and post-millennialists believe
01:00:23.540
the kingdom is already but not fully not fully we are building it not us christ in us christ
01:00:34.140
through us through our faithfulness this is why we can get behind the missions movement this is
01:00:41.300
why we can get behind giving to the church and building things that last.
01:00:46.260
If we have a long view of history, we stop building things that only last for a generation.
01:01:04.840
Imagine that you're on a team preparing for the championship game.
01:01:09.260
if you believe victory is certain if you're confident that you're going to win
01:01:15.500
you're going to play with that confidence you're going to play with focus you're going to play
01:01:21.240
with determination but if you believe that you are destined to lose if you are predestined to lose
01:01:30.980
you will play with fear with doubt with anticipation of failure in other words
01:01:39.220
how you view the future, whether you expect victory or defeat, will actually affect how you
01:01:44.760
live today. That's why this conversation is so important. Post-millennialism is truly the only
01:01:52.040
victorious and optimistic way to live as a Christian. Doug Wilson once wrote,
01:02:00.340
post-millennialism is the only eschatology that actually believes in the power of the gospel to
01:02:06.380
transform the world. The other views either retreat into pessimism or wait for a divine
01:02:13.340
rescue mission. Ours expects victory because Christ is victorious. R.J. Rushduni added on,
01:02:22.420
he says, quote, only post-millennialism offers a vision of triumph that motivates Christians to
01:02:29.700
conquer the world for Christ, while other eschatologies surrender to the devil or await
01:02:36.220
the world's destruction. That is exactly what we have done in America since the infection
01:02:43.200
of pessimistic eschatology. We have handed over all of our institutions to the world.
01:02:52.160
We have treated evangelism as an invitation to come to the losing team. In fact, we are all about
01:02:58.020
losing because the faster we lose the sooner Christ comes back we are quote rapture ready
01:03:04.640
there's literally companies that sell rapture insurance for your pets
01:03:09.400
not kidding okay we have been consumed and saturated with defeatism
01:03:17.760
and we have lost almost every particular area of society because we have checked out we say you
01:03:25.500
you know, the world's going to hell in a handbasket. We can't save it. Why would we engage in it?
01:03:29.900
We're going to lose. It's just going to get worse. Why would I go in and try to save the media?
01:03:34.920
Why would I try to go in and save the medical system? Why would I try to go in and save the
01:03:40.020
economic system? We're just going to lose. So what do you do? You check out, you hand over the system
01:03:47.440
to the world, and you get the results that we've had in this nation for the last hundred years.
01:03:52.440
but if you treated it like a post-millennial we would have had the nation that we had in the 16
01:04:01.100
and 17 and early 1800s it wasn't perfect it still had problems it was still a war there's still sin
01:04:07.900
there's still the devil and there's still the flesh but it's victorious and it's conquering
01:04:13.480
and it's christian and our leaders were rulers that ruled according to the word of god
01:04:19.620
i'll close with this greg bonson said the thing that distinguishes biblical post-millennialists
01:04:27.620
from amillennialists and premillennialists is his belief that scripture teaches the success
01:04:34.300
of the great commission optimism rooted in christ's authority not human effort
01:04:40.840
we have been given as corbin said jesus is david okay when david and goliath are fighting
01:04:55.980
jesus is pictured typographically as david the enemy of god's people is goliath
01:05:36.060
so think about it jesus has decapitated through the cross satan his head's been cut off
01:05:47.300
and what are you doing as the armies of the lord are you just going you know what
01:05:54.140
just wait for jesus to come back and rescue us it's all kind of the armies are going to kill
01:06:00.260
us anyway so no no the reality is we should be going and following and running after christ
01:06:07.880
building the kingdom letting the entire world know christ won by the way your old ruler has
01:06:14.360
been defeated submit to christ it's like walking into the jungles after the war has been over for
01:06:21.440
two years and letting people know hey the war is over we won
01:06:24.660
this is the posture that will create what i believe is a potent masculine masculine christianity
01:06:35.100
a conquering christianity amen amen this series will include five more sermons
01:06:48.360
Part two will be, is Christ's kingdom now or in the future?
01:06:52.680
Where I'm going to argue that the kingdom is now
01:06:56.020
and we're not waiting for the kingdom to be inaugurated.
01:06:59.500
That'll defeat, Lord willing, the premillennial view.
01:07:05.580
Part three will be an introduction to partial preterism.
01:07:12.280
are talking about events that happened in 70 AD.
01:07:14.960
and number four part four and five and six will be a three-part biblical defense for
01:07:21.960
post-millennialism using scripture amen okay let's pray father we thank you lord for
01:07:31.120
the victory of the cross for the work that you have done in the world lord we ask that you would
01:07:41.180
give us clarity on the scriptures over these next couple weeks that we would see
01:07:46.980
the counterintuitive kingdom the kingdom that is conquering its enemies through the cross
01:07:55.220
lord that you would show us in in spite of all of the propaganda for a defeatist mentality in
01:08:04.140
our culture, that you are winning because you have already won. And Lord, we ask that you would give
01:08:12.540
us wisdom, that you would teach us the truth, and that you would be with us in this fight.