Before examining the argument for the three different positions of the Millennium, it is important to realize that the interpretation of the details of prophetic passages regarding future events is often a complex and difficult task involving many variables factors. The degree of certainty that attaches to this conclusion in this area will be less than with many other doctrines. I think it is important for evangelicals to recognize that this area of studt is complex and to extend a large measure of grace to others who hold different views regarding the millennium and the tribulation period.
The arguments in favor of postmillennialism are as follows:
- The Great Commission leads us to expect that the gospel will go forth in power and eventually result in a largely Christian world: Jesus explicitly said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:18 – 20). Since Christ has all authority in heaven and on earth, and since he promises to be with us in the fulfillment of this commission, we would expect that it would transpire without hindrance and eventually triumph in the whole world.
- Parables of the gradual growth of the kingdom indicate that it eventually will fill the earth with its influence. Here postmillennialists point to the following:
Another parable he put before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31 – 32)
We can also note the following verse: “He told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened'” (Matthew 13:33). According to postmillennialists both of these parables indicate that the kingdom will grow in influence until it permeates and in some measure, transforms the entire world.
- Postmillennialists will also argue that the world is becoming more Christian. The church is growing and spreading throughout the world, and even when it is persecuted and oppressed it grows remarkably by the power of God.
At this point we must make a very significant distinction, however. The “millennium” that postmillennialists hold to is very different from the “millennium” the pre-millennialists talk about. In a sense, they are not even discussing the same topic. While premillennialists talk about a renewed earth with Jesus Christ physically present and reigning as King, together with glorified believers in resurrection bodies, postmillennialists are simply talking about an earth with many, many Christians influencing society. They do not think of a millennium consisting of a renewed earth or glorified saints or Christ present in bodily form to reign (for they think that these things will only occur after Christ returns to inaugurate the eternal state). The entire discussion of the millennium is more than simply a discussion of the sequence of events surrounding it. It also involves a significant difference over the nature of this period of time itself.
Though I am not aware if anyone has done this, it would see, to be impossible for someone to be a postmillennialist and a premillennialist at the same time, with two different senses of the term millennium. Someone could conceivably be a postmillennialist and think that the gospel will grow in influence until the world is largely Christian, and that then Christ will return and set up a literal earthly reign, raising believers from the dead to reign with him in glorified bodies. Or, on the other hand, a very optimistic premillennialist could conceivably adopt many of the postmillennialist teachings about the increasingly Christian nature of this present age.
In response to the postmillennialist arguments, the following points may be made:
- The Great Commission does indeed speak of the authority that is given into Christ’s hand, but that does not necessarily imply that Christ will use that authority to bring about the conversion of the majority of the population of the world. To say that Christ’s authority is great is simply another way of saying that God’s power is infinite, which no one will deny. But the question is the extent to which Christ will use his power to bring about the numerical growth of the church. We may assume that he will use it to a very full extent and will bring about worldwide Christianization, but such an assumption is merely that, an assumption. It is not based on any specific evidence in the Great Commission or in other texts that talk about Christ’s authority and power in this present age.
- The parables of the mustard seed and the leaven do tell us that the kingdom of God will gradually grow from something very small to something very large, but they do not tell us the extent to which the kingdom will grow. For example, the parable of the mustard seed does not tell us that the tree grew so that it spread throughout the whole earth. And the parable of the leaven simply talks about gradual growth that permeates society (as the church has already done), but it says nothing about the degree or effect that that influence has (it does not tell us, for example, whether in the end 5 percent of the loaf was leaven and 95 percent bread dough, or 20 percent leaven and 80 percent bread, or 60 percent leaven and 40 percent bread, and so forth). It is simply pressing the parable beyond its intended purpose to attempt to make it say more than that the kingdom will grow gradually and eventually have an influence on every society in which it is planted.
- In response to the argument that the world is becoming more Christian, it must be said that the world is also becoming more evil. No student of history or modern society will argue that mankind has made much progress through the centuries in overcoming the depth of perversity and the extent of immorality that remain in people’s hearts. Indeed, modernization in western societies in the twentieth century has often been accompanied not by moral improvement but by an unprecedented level of drug abuse, marital infidelity, pornography, homosexuality, rebellion against authority, superstition (in astrology and the New Age movement), materialism, greed, theft, and falsehood in speech. Even among professing Christians there is repeated evidence of dismaying imperfection in the Christian life, especially in the realms of personal morality and depth of intimacy with God. In places where Bible-believing Christians comprise large segments of the population, still nothing like an earthly millennial kingdom occurs. It is true that the growth of the church as a percentage of world population has been remarkable in recent decades, and we should be greatly encouraged by this. It is possible that we will someday see a far greater influence of genuine Christianity upon many societies, and if that occurred, it would make the postmillennial position seem more plausible. But such events could also be understood within a premillennial or amillennial framework, so the final decision regarding these competing positions must still be made by interpreting the relevant biblical texts.
- Finally, we should note that there are several New Testament passages that seem to give explicit denial to the postmillennial position. Jesus said, “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13 – 14). Rather than teaching that a majority of the world will become Christians, Jesus seems here to be saying that those who are saved will be “few” in contrast to the “many” who travel toward eternal destruction. Similarly, Jesus asks, “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8), a question that suggests that the earth will not be filled with those who believe, but will be dominated rather by those who do not have faith.
Contrary to the view that the world will get better and better as the influence of the church grows, Paul predicts that before Christ returns “the rebellion” will come and “the man of lawlessness” will be revealed, “the son of perdition” who “takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thessalians 2:3 – 4).
When writing to Timothy about the last days, Paul says,
In the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. (2 Timothy 3:1 – 5)
He says further:
All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived . . . the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. (2 Timothy 3:12 – 13; 4:3 – 4)
Finally, and perhaps most conclusively, Matthew 24:15 – 31 speaks of a great tribulation that will precede the time of Christ’s return:
For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been shortened, no human being would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. . . Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken; then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. (Matthew 24:21 – 30)
This passage pictures not a Christianized world but a world of great suffering and evil, a great tribulation that exceeds all previous periods of suffering on the earth. It does not say that the great majority of the world will welcome Christ when he comes, but rather that when the sign of the Son of man appears in heaven, “then all the tribes of the earth will mourn” (Matthew 24:30).
Since Matthew 24 is such a difficult passage from the postmillennialist perspective, there have been several attempts to explain it not as a prediction of events that will occur just prior to Christ’s second coming, but rather as something that was mainly fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
To sustain this interpretation, postmillennialists make most of the elements of Matthew 24:29 – 31 symbolic: the sun and moon being darkened, the stars falling from heaven, and the powers of the heavens being shaken are not to be understood as literal events, but as imagery for God’s coming in judgment. Similar imagery for judgment is said to be found in Ezekiel 32:7; Joel 2:10; and Amos 8:9, but these passages simply speak of judgments of darkness, and do not mention the stars falling from heaven or the powers of the heavens being shaken. It is far from obvious that these passages are merely apocalyptic imagery for judgment on Jerusalem.
The interpretation that sees these as merely symbolic statements grows more difficult as the statement of Jesus continues, for he does not only talk about signs in the sun, moon, and stars, but he says immediately after that, “then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven … and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30).
When Jesus elsewhere speaks of his coming on the clouds, he speaks not of a coming to God the Father in heaven, but a coming to people on earth: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, everyone who pierced him; and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him” (Revelation 1:7). And when Christ returns, Paul says that we who are alive “shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalians 4:17). When Christ comes on the clouds of glory with great power and authority, he comes to reign over the earth, and this is the sense of Matthew 24:30 – 31. The fact that these tribes will see Jesus coming makes it difficult to understand any symbolic or invisible heavenly interpretation here. The piling up of factors that we know from other texts to be connected with Christ’s return (cosmic signs, Christ’s coming with power, the loud trumpet call, the angels gathering the elect) provides a cumulative case for believing that Christ’s second coming, not just a symbolic representation of his receiving authority, is in view here. And if Matthew 24 talks about Christ’s second coming, then it talks about his coming just after a period of great tribulation, not after a millennium of peace and righteousness has been established on the earth.”
Finally, all of the passages indicating that Christ could return soon and that we must be ready for him to return at any time must be considered a significant argument against postmillennialism as well. For if Christ could return at any time, and we are to be ready for his return, then the long period required for the establishment of the millennium on earth before Christ returns simply cannot be thought a persuasive theory.
The Millennuim: The three major views, posted October 8, 2017
Arguments for Amillennialism, last week, October 15, 2017
Arguments for Postmillennialism, this week, October 22, 2017
Arguments for Premillennialism, next weeks, October 29, 2017