1

APPENDIX

THE MILLENNIAL ISSUE

During the period of decline prior to the fall of the kingdom and in the exile afterward, God gave much revelation about Israel’s long-range hope for the future. The revealed hope concerned the final triumph of the Kingdom of God in the world with Israel’s fulfilling her role as the priestly nation in the international community (cf. Exod. 19:5-6; Isa. 2:1-4). A three-sided controversy dealing with varied interpretations of the hope has arisen, however, in the years since God’s revelation. The controversy itself, simplified descriptions of each position, and resolution of the conflict are presented below.

THE THREE-SIDED CONTROVERSY

Origins of the Controversy. As Hebrew thinkers meditated upon this hope in the days of the silence of God, a division of opinion arose concerning the nature of the final

triumphant Kingdom of God. The question was whether the Kingdom would follow the great judgment and resurrection that would end history and, therefore, be essentially identical with the eternal state or whether the Kingdom would precede the great judgment and resurrection and be part of history. Figure 1 pictures the dilemma.

Triumphant Judgment & Triumphant

PRESENT---------------?---------------- X X X X ---------------------?---------------ETERNITY

Kingdom of God Resurrection Kingdom of God

Figure 1.—The Pre-NT Controversy of Kingdom and Judgment

Later, when the Church became established in the Christian era, the controversy of the Kingdom continued and became more complex. To the previous Jewish question

regarding the nature and sequence of the Kingdom was added the Christian question of the relationship of the Church to the Kingdom. Men debated whether the Church was a “spiritualized” version of the long-promised triumphant Kingdom, or if the Church was only a forerunner of the yet-to-come Kingdom.

The Three Viewpoints. Since those who believed that the triumphant Kingdom of God would occur in history rather than in eternity often spoke of its duration as a thousand years, the word millennium was coined from the Latin word for thousand, mille. It is in terms of the millennium, therefore, that the entire controversy is usually described. Each of the three schools of thought which have developed over the centuries is labeled by how it places the triumphant Kingdom of God, the millennium, in relationship to the return of Christ.

Premillennialism is the view which places the millennium in history and the return of Christ prior (Latin pre) to the millennium. Premillennialism, then, considers the Church distinct from the future Kingdom.

Postmillennialism places the return of Christ after (Latin post) the millennium which the Church is gradually to bring about in history. The millennium in this view is not necessarily a literal thousand year period; it becomes an indeterminate historical period of increasing righteousness and peace. The Church clearly would merge into the future Kingdom.

Amillennnialism (Greek a = no) drops completely the idea of an earthly triumph of the Kingdom of God in mortal history and asserts that Old Testament prophecies of such a triumph are fulfilled spiritually by the Church and/or by the eternal state. The Church is conceived as a spiritual version of the Kingdom. Figure 2 portrays the contrast in the three positions.

PREMILLENNIAL VIEW:

Christ’s Triumphant Judgment.

Present-----------------------O-----------------------------------------XXXX-----------Eternity

Return Kingdom of God Resurrection

AMILLENNIAL VIEW:

Christ’s Judgment

Present-------------------------------------------------------------O XXXX-------------Eternity

Return Resurrection

POSTMILLENNIAL VIEW:

Triumphant Christ’s Judgment

Present-------------------------------------------------------------O XXXX-------------Eternity

Kingdom of God Return Resurrection

Figure 2. The Post-NT Controversy of Christ’s Return, Kingdom, and Judgment.

Summary of the Controversy. In preparation for the discussion which follows each of the three views, premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism, will now be briefly compared using three distinct checkpoints. The checkpoints are as follows: First, is Christ’s future return identical with the final judgment and resurrection; that is, will it terminate history and usher in eternity, or is His return prior to and separate from the final judgment that will come later? Secondly, will the Kingdom of God finally triumph over worldly culture in history, or must the final triumph of the Kingdom await eternity? Thirdly, will evil be greatly reduced in history before Christ’s return, or will Christ’s return be necessary to effect a great reduction in evil?

By using these checkpoints one may quickly compare the three schools of thought. Table 1 summarized the three-sided controversy. The premillennial school stands against the other two schools at the first checkpoint. Only premillennialism distinguishes the return of Christ from the final judgment that ends history. Both postmillennialism and amillennialism insist that such a separation is invalid; Christ’s return, these schools assert, is identical to the final great judgment.

Checkpoint	Premillennialism	Postmillennialism	Amillennialism
Christ’s return to end history	NO	YES	YES
Kingdom to triumph over world culture	YES	YES	NO
Evil not to be reduced greatly before Christ’s return	YES	NO	YES

Table 1. Comparison of the three millennial viewpoints from the three checkpoints discussed in the text.

Again studying each of the three viewpoints, this time using the second checkpoint, one can see that amillennialism now stands alone. Only amillennialism insists that the historical triumph of the Kingdom of God must await eternity. Both premillennialism and postmillennialism claim to the contrary that the Kingdom must and will triumph in mortal history before eternity begins.

Finally, viewing the three schools at the third checkpoint, one finds that postmillennialism stands apart from the other two schools regarding the issue of evil. Postmillennialism alone foresees a great reduction in evil prior to Christ’s return. In an opposite vein both premillennialism and amillennialism see no such great reduction in evil before Christ comes back.

With the three viewpoints on the millennium briefly described and compared, the discussion can now move to a consideration of each viewpoint in more detail. Each section which follows will treat first the history of the viewpoint and then its primary features. For the sake of clarity the order of the viewpoints will be changed to premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism.

PREMILLENNIALISM

Origin and History of Premillennialism. Premillennialism arose in Jewish circles prior to the time of Christ. The history of premillennialism includes both this pre-Christian development and the later Christian refinement.

1. Jewish History. In the pre-Christian era great ferment occurred in Jewish eschatological thought over the nature of the triumphant Kingdom of God. Evidences of a new development during this period are the pseudoepigraphical works of I Enoch (written around 100 BC) and II Enoch (written during Christ’s time) which record the rise of the idea of a temporary, historical Kingdom prior to the end of history and separate from the eternal state. The great authority on pseudoepigraphical literature, R. H. Charles, says concerning I Enoch:

“According to the universal expectation of the past the resurrection and the final judgment were to form the prelude to an everlasting Messianic Kingdom on earth, but from this time forth these great events are relegated to its close, and the Messianic Kingdom is for the first time in literature conceived as of temporary duration.”[1] In II Enoch the duration of this temporary Messianic Kingdom was placed at one thousand years. It declared that the close of the thousand-year period history would end and eternity begin.[2] Other Jewish ideas of the long duration of the temporary Messianic Kingdom ranged from forty years to seven thousand years.[3]

Whether the final Kingdom was conceived as the last stage of history or as the eternal state, however, Jewish thought has always insisted that it would be material, earthly, and centered upon Jerusalem. In the ancient Jewish benedictions for daily prayer a portion reads:

“Proclaim by Thy loud trumpet our deliverance, and raise up a banner to gather our dispersed, and gather us together from the four ends of the earth. Blessed by Thou, O Lord, Who gatherest the outcasts of Thy people, Israel.”[4]

Even in modern times the Jewish Passover closes each year with the phrase: “Coming year in Jerusalem!” It was, indeed, this earthly character that led to the idea of the Messianic Kingdom’s being in history, rather than in eternity.

2. Christian History. Premillennialists have always pointed to Revelation 19:11-20:15 as the key passage for their position. They point out that the Apostles were premillennialists and that the early Church followed apostolic teaching in this regard. Authorities on Church history agree that in the first several centuries of Christianity premillennialism was the majority view. Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165), the foremost apologist of the second century, was clearly premillennial. He wrote:

“But I and whoever are on all points right-minded Christians know that there will be resurrection of the dead and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged as the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and the other declare. . . . And, further, a certain man with us, named John, one of the Apostles of Christ, predicted by a revelation that was made to him that those who believed in our Christ would spend a thousand years in Jerusalem, and thereafter the general, or to speak briefly, the eternal resurrection and judgment of all men would likewise take place.”[5].

Premillennialism, or chiliasm as it is sometimes called, gradually declined by the fourth century due to several factors. Politically, the Church had become powerful, It was declared the state religion of the Roman Empire (395). A future far-off Kingdom was no longer as attractive when a present Kingdom seemed possible. Philosophically, Neo-Platonism exercised influence through Origen (ca. 185-254) and Augustine (354-430). A key Platonic idea that affected the millennial discussion was that all matter is evil and anything good is immaterial. Therefore, reasoned the Neo-Platonist, a material kingdom would be evil, and Christ could not rule something evil: His Kingdom had to be “good.” The Bible now began to be interpreted allegorically, particularly when it referred to earthly and material blessings in the Messianic Kingdom. Finally, the Church was becoming more desirous of disassociating itself from Jewish culture. Hebrew Christians, for example, were required to give up all their Jewishness in order to belong to the Church. Premillennialism was too solidly identified with Israel for the Church leaders of the fourth-century era to leave it unchallenged. [6]

Although mainline Roman Catholic thought continued to oppose premillennial eschatological thinking, one can trace a narrow line of premillennial groups from the fourth century into the late Middle Ages. The Waldensians, the Lollards, the Wycliffites, and the Bohemian Protestants represent a few of the circles which thought in premillennial terms. [7]

Unfortunately, there were also radical groups who seized upon the millennial vision as a justification for radical social upheavals. Although they are closer to postmillennial thoughts of ushering in the “golden age,” in the popular mind they became associated with premillennialism. Thus Thomas Munster and his followers brought premillennialism into great disrepute by their unbiblical exaggerations of the millennium and by their works-centered schemes to bring in the millennium through radical human revolution. From them came later visions of a great historical climax through human works such as Communism and Nazism which, ironically, as anti-Christian movements find their foundation for historical progress in Christianity. [8]

During the later Reformation period the Protestant leaders continued the Roman Catholic amillennial doctrine. Some of the factors present in the fourth century were still at work in the fifteen century to suppress premillennialism. In the Augsburg Confession, Article XVII for example, premillennialism was condemned as “Jewish”:

“They condemn other also, who now scatter Jewish opinions, that, before the resurrection of the dead, the godly shall occupy the kingdom of the world, the wicked

being every suppressed.”[9]

In the Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter XI, one reads these significant words: “We condemn the Jewish dreams, that before the day of judgment there shall be a golden age in the earth. . . .”[10] Clearly, a certain kind of anti-Semitism seem to have been involved with this denial of premillennialism.[11]

In more modern times men of the stature of John Milton, John Wesley, Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, Franz Delitzsch, Dean Alford, and Phillip Schaff have been premillennial scholars. By 1878 when the American fundamentalists held their first interdenominational conference at the Church of the Holy Trinity in New York City, premillennialism had begun a comeback. Many teachers from the Reformed Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Anglican denominations insisted at this Conference that premillennialism was the logical outcome of the literal, Protestant interpretation of Scripture. One of the speakers was Nathaniel West of Cincinnati, Ohio. He explained why the Reformers dealt very little with eschatology.

“West brought to light a central claim of both Orthodoxy and Fundamentalism ever since his day. And that claim was that the emphasis of the Reformers was in the area of salvation, justification by faith, and in other great doctrines of grace. Doing such valiant service, they could not give the proper time and study to the vast area of eschatology.”[12].

Thus the newly resurgent premillennialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was seen as a further extension of the Protestant Reformation. It finished “reforming” the faith from the medieval Roman Catholicism.

Features of Premillennialism. Let’s look at the central features of premillennialism by using the three checkpoints mentioned in Table 1 above.

1. Christ’s Return Does Not End History. Against both amillennialism and postmillennialism, premillennialism insists that Revelation 19:11-20:15 speaks of one

chronologically continuous period of future history in which first Christ returns (19:11-21), then dead believers are resurrected to reign with Christ in His Messianic Kingdom for 1000 years (20:1-6), and afterward a brief revolt by Satan is put down prior to the beginning of eternity (20:7-15). With this interpretation of Revelation 20, even scholars of such non-evangelical background as R. H. Charles and Oscar Cullman are in substantial agreement. [13]

Other passages in the NT which describe Christ’s return without specific mention of the millennium are prophetically abbreviated, premillenarians affirm. I Corinthians 15:20-28 mentions several stages in history. Between verse 23 and verse 24 there is adequate room for the millennium. Ephesians 2:7 speaks of ages (plural) yet to come. Matthew 24:4-25:46 reveals details about Christ’s return; yet it does not mention anything about resurrection, again leaving an open picture in which the millennium is possible.

2. The Kingdom of God Will Triumph Over World Culture. In agreement with postmillennialism, but against amillennialism, premillennialism insists that the OT prophecies of a golden age in history amidst sin and death (e.g., Isa. 2:1-5; 65:18-25) must be fulfilled this side of eternity.[14] Christ must subdue world culture, not just individuals, or His victory is incomplete. Before eternity begins there must be a manifestation of the glory of God in history over every area in order to fulfill the mandate given to humanity in Adam (Gen. 1:26-28). [15]

Even premillenarians themselves are prone to forget that the future millennium is not going to be built out of a vacuum. Technological advances, cultural arts, and social institutions built up over previous human history will be carried over into the millennium as starting assets. Christ will suppress and bind Satan, but prophecies nowhere indicate that He will build man’s culture for him. The millennium will be a time when human cultural advance will drastically accelerate beginning with what has been accomplished up to that point. In music, for example, Bach will not be forgotten, but new composers will be able to compose thrilling and spiritually satisfying music as never before. As Alva McClain says of premillennialism:

“It says that life, here and now, in spite of the tragedy of sin, is nevertheless something worthwhile; and therefore all the efforts to make it better are also worthwhile. All the true values of human life will be preserved and carried over into the coming kingdom; nothing worthwhile will be lost.”[16]

3. Evil Will Not Be Reduced Greatly Before Christ’s Return. In agreement with amillennialism, but against postmillennialism, premillennialism holds to the position that evil is so deeply rooted in history that it will require the cataclysmic return of Christ to reduce it to levels low enough for human culture to progress in any really spiritual sense. As amillennialist Berkouwer notes, passages like the following have always given postmillennialists trouble: Romans 8:18-26; I Corinthians 7:31; II Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2; Colossians 3:2; II Thessalonians 2:3-9; II Timothy 3:1-5; Hebrews 1:10-11; I Peter 4:12-19; II Peter 3:3-5; I John 5:19; Jude 1:18.

If evil is to be gradually suppressed, as postmillennialists insist, it is hard to find any place in history where this process has already begun. Boettner, a postmillennialist spokesman, admits: “On postmillennial ground it hardly seem that even in the most advanced nations on earth we have anything that is worthy of being called more than the early dawn of the Millennium.”[17] In fact, in those areas of the world where Christianity in the past had a great influence such as North Africa and New England once it was rejected, it has never come back again. Progress, then, according to premillennialism, may occur in local areas for limited time, but the full development of human culture the way God intended awaits Christ’s return.

AMILLENNIALISM

Origin and History of Amillennialism. Amillennialism arose, like premillennialism, from pre-Christian developments. In the case of amillennialism, however, the developments did not have to do with the time of the triumphant Kingdom of God as much as they had to do with the nature of the Kingdom.

1. Jewish History. In trying to understand the prophecies of a future golden age, the early amillennialists believed that these prophecies had to be interpreted spiritually by a system of allegorical hermeneutics (rules of interpretation of literature). The rise of allegorical hermeneutics, therefore, provided the basis for amillennialism.

The first prominent allegorical interpreter of Scripture was the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria (20 BC - AD 54). Bernard Ramm says of Philo:

“Philo did not think that the literal meaning was useless, but it represented the immature level of understanding. The literal sense was the body of Scripture, and the

allegorical sense its soul. Accordingly, the literal was for the immature, and the allegorical for the mature. . .

Some of this method is sound. . .for there are allegorical and figurative elements in Scripture. But most of it led to the fantastic and absurd. For example, Abraham’s

trek to Palestine is really the story of a Stoic philosopher who leaves Chaldea (sensual understanding) and stops in Haran, which means “holes,” which signifies the

emptiness of knowing things by holes, that is the senses. When he becomes Abraham he becomes a truly enlightened philosopher. To marry Sarah is to marry

abstract wisdom.”[18]

2. Christian History. The allegorical system of hermeneutics begun by Philo was adopted by increasing numbers of Church authorities during the first four centuries after Christ. Men like Origen (who lived in Philo’s city of Alexandria) and Augustine (who was heavily influenced by Neo-Platonism at this point) popularized the allegorical treatment of the Old Testament in Christian circles. The great student of hermeneutics, F. W. Farrar, spoke of Origen: “Allegory helped him get rid of chiliasm.”[19] Amillennial scholar Oswald Allis says of Augustine: “He taught that the millennium is to be interpreted spiritually as fulfilled in the Christian Church.”[20] Unfortunately, with this transfer of Old Testament prophecies from a relationship to Israel to a relationship with the Church, a subtle form of anti-Semitism became implicit in Christian theology. Jewish historian H. H. Ben-Sasson observes of this shift:

“Christianity claimed ownership of what it regarded as its Holy Land by virtue of the Jewish past, of which it claimed to be heir. . . .The Christian message based itself on the premise that, with the destruction of Jerusalem and rejection of the Jewish people by the Lord, the entire covenant, including the promise of the land of Israel, became vested in Christendom.”[21]

Amillennialism was carried on by the Reformers from Augustine so that today it is the majority view among Protestant Churches as an inheritance from Romanism. Sadly, the associated persecution of Jews under Romanism during the Middle Ages continued under the Protestants. In his latter days, Martin Luther became very anti-Semitic advocating arson attacks against synagogues and Jewish homes, assaults against rabbis, and confiscation of Jewish silver and gold. Nazism, tragically, built upon this earlier German anti-Semitism.[22].

Nevertheless, outstanding biblical scholars like Abraham Kuyper, Louis Berkhof, Oswald Allis, Albertus Pieters, William Hendriksen, and G. C. Berkouwer have been amillennialists. Amillennialism has become an adopted part of the official creeds of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, the Christian Reformed Church, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Unofficially, it dominates most Baptist and Church of Christ circles. Features of Amillennialism. Let’s look at the central features of amillennialism in the same way we did those of premillennialism--by using the three checkpoints mentioned in Table 1 above. That amillennialism relies upon the allegorical method of interpretation is commonly agreed; that it does so unbiblically is hotly debated. Amillennialists insist that when one deals with prophetic portions of the Bible the allegorical method is proper. They point to passages like Galatians 3:25-26; Hebrews 12:22; Revelation 11:8; and the book of Hebrews as a whole to confirm the validity of the allegorical approach. Furthermore, amillennialists argue, the allegorical method is the only possible method that can be used with prophecies concerning long-vanished nations like Assyria, Moab, Ammon, Edom, and Philistia. Such nations no longer literally exist.

The exact features of amillennialism are hard to define because most amillennial writings are primarily antichiliastic. Expositions of the position in positive terms other than Augustine’s City of God are hard to find. Even in Berkouwer’s eschatological text, The Return of Christ, there is a complete lack of discussion of the OT covenants and how amillennialism deals with them. Thus Dr. Charles Feinberg, a premillennialist, sataes the matter fairly when he writes: “This is the amillennial method: to raise as many questions as possible, but at the same time to build no system of one’s own.”[23] In the discussion below, therefore, all the various types of amillennialism may not be represented, but the main amillennial outline will be apparent from considerations of the three checkpoints defined above.

1. Christ’s Return Ends History. Amillennialism agrees with postmillennialism and differs from premillennialism in holding that Christ’s return does not usher in the last era of history but ends history completely. Amillennialists do not believe there is any gap big enough for an entire millennium in passages like Matthew 24:4-25:46 and I Corinthians 15:20-28. For support they cite particularly II Peter 3:7-13 where the coming of Christ is immediately juxtaposed with the creation of the new heavens and new earth. II Thessalonians 1:7-10 also teaches that Christ’s return ends history with the great judgment, amillennialists believe.

The key premillennial proof-text, Revelation 19:11-20:15, is handled by amillennialists in a variety of ways. Those who take the passage as a straight chronological sequence interpret Revelation 19:11-21 not as the second advent of Christ, but as His spiritual victory through the Church. Jay Adams, for example, notes:

“That this [passage] does not describe a physical coming such as the second advent is apparent from at least two facts: first, Christ is nowhere else said to return upon a horse. He did not ascend this way, and he is to return as he ascended. . . .The horse was the emblem of war. That is its emblematic purpose here. Secondly, the

conflict described here is spiritual, a battle waged and won by the Word of God. . . .Once before, a judgment-coming employed sword-of-mouth destruction was

contemplated (Rev. 2:12). That passage cannot be confused with the second coming, either.”[24]

Thus Revelation 19:11-21 depicts the spiritual victory Christ wins through His Church by His Word; Revelation 20:7-15 then portrays the actual second advent of Christ, according to this view.

Other amillennialists do not treat the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of Revelation chronologically. Scholars such as Louis Berkhof, William Hendriksen, and Oswald Allis take the nineteenth chapter as referring to the second advent and then consider the twentieth chapter as a “recapitulation.” The thousand years, they believe, are symbolical of the saints reigning in heaven with Christ.

2. The Kingdom of God Will Not Triumph Over World Culture. Regarding the second checkpoint amillennialism stands alone against both premillennialism and postmillennialism. Prophecies of a golden age are to be applied to the Church or to the eternal state. That such a spiritual interpretation is biblically correct can be proven, amillennialists say, by comparing Hebrews 12:22 with Isaiah 2:1-5 and Micah 4:1-5. They claim that the author of Hebrews apparently sees the times of Isaiah 2 as fulfilled by the Church. Isaiah 65:17-25 speaks of “a new heavens and a new earth” which must be the future eternal state described in II Peter 3:13 and Revelation 21:1, amillennialists affirm.

Such spiritualization of the golden-age prophecies is precisely what Jesus did, claim these scholars, in Matthew 13. In Matthew 13:11 Jesus said that the disciples were to be taught “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven”, i.e., new truths about the real nature of the kingdom prophecies. The Lord took the disciples aside, in this view, to correct their erroneous belief that the coming kingdom would be material and physical. The real nature of the promised kingdom is spiritual, and the promises are being fulfilled by the Church and Christ’s reign at the Father’s right hand, they assert. The spiritual fulfillment of the OT promises by the Church is confirmed, amillennialists believe, by NT passages which refer to believers as the spiritual seed of Abraham (Rom. 4:11-12; Gal. 3:6-9, 29). [25]

3. Evil Will Not Be Reduced Greatly Before Christ’s Return. Since amillennialism agrees with premillennialism against postmillennism concerning victory over evil during the Church Age, the major arguments given above will not be repeated here. Jay Adams, an amillennialist professor of counseling, expresses his disagreement with postmillennial ideas of a pre-advent golden age on earth: “The sin and consequent problems among Christians prove that such a society would be far from golden.”[26]

Amillennialism has one additional problem at this point that premillennialism does not and that concerns the “binding of Satan” in Revelation 20:1-2. If Revelation 20 refers to the Church age and not to a future millennium, then in what sense is Satan bound today? Amillennialists reply that this binding is the same kind of binding that is mentioned in Matthew 12:29 and that is implied in II Thessalonians 2:7, i.e., the restraining ministry of the Holy Spirit.

POSTMILLENNIALISM

Origin and History of Postmillennialism. The idea of a triumphant Kingdom of God in history continuous with the present occurs in early Old Testament Jewish history and in later Church history in radically different forms.

1. Jewish History. As I demonstrated in Part III of this series, the Sinaitic Covenant promised conquest and dominion to Israel but on the “condition” of their comprehensive obedience to Yahweh. Sadly, we found during the Conquest and Settlement period that Israel did not obey the Heavenly King and so never could conquer the land to establish the Kingdom. The book of Judges revealed God’s sentence of doom regarding such a kingdom for Israel. In the following monarchial period of Jewish history, as we saw in the previous chapters of this Part IV, not only did the people fail to be faithful but their leaders and kings did also. The Exile and Partial Restoration testify that the Kingdom was yet future to those historical periods. As we will see in Part V the possibility of transition into the Kingdom would be contingent upon Israel’s response to the Messiah. Even after the Messiah’s rejection and death, Israel was offered yet another opportunity to enter the Kingdom in early Acts (see Part VI)..9

2. Christian History. In Christian circles, the idea of the Kingdom coming into history prior to Jesus’ return was mingled with amillennial beliefs as a sort of “optimistic amillennialism.” Postmillennialists along with amillennialists claim Augustine as one of their founding fathers. The reason for this dual claim is that Augustine equated the Church with the Kingdom and fully expected it to flourish until Christ’s return occurred several centuries after Augustine’s day.

The first real postmillennial statement, however, in the modern sense of the word, was made in the twelfth century by Joachim of Floris, a Roman Catholic.[27] Prominent Reformed scholars who were postmillennialsts are Coccejus (1603-69), Witsius (1636-1708), and Jonathan Edwards (1636-1716), Recent postmillennialists in America during the past 150 years include William Dabney, A. A. Hodge, Charles Hodge, William Shedd, Augustus Strong, B. B. Warfield, J. Gresham Machen, Loraine Boettner, and R. J. Rushdoony—most of whom have been or are conservative Presbyterians.

One of the foremost proponents of posmillennialism during the last 40 years has been R. J. Rushdoony. He and other like-minded conservative Presbyterians insist that premillennialism as well as pessimistic amillennialism “block” the progress of the Church in influencing society. Writing in the early 1970s of the optimistic vision of present-day postmillennialists:

“Post-millennialism once turned this country around. First, it established it, with the Puritans. Then with the new Puritans, Bellamy and Hopkins [two Puritan leaders very responsible for the War of Independence] and their followers it turned [the country] around again, and we gained our freedom. . . .

William Johnson said of Bellemy and Hopkins, “Merely a handful and merely religious.” And yet, in about three decades, they had conquered the churches and the

government positions in the Colonies. Three decades will take us to the end of this century, and to a different society. Why? Because we are the ones with no blocked future. . . .”[28]

However, just as premillennialism had its radicals and amillennialism its anti-Semitism, postmillennialism has also had its unwelcome camp-followers. During the nineteenth century social reform movements such as freeing the slaves and welfare for the urban impoverished led to what became known as the “Social Gospel.” While much of the impetus for these reforms came from evangelical Christians, soon unbelieving and liberal elements took them over. Having capitulated to pagan unbelief, higher criticism of the Bible, and the overthrow of Christian orthodoxy, the new Social Gospel leaders still realized that it was the evangelical orthodox people who donated the money and the time which they desperately needed. They saw that a postmillennial viewpoint had to be kept alive. The threat to the Social Gospel, they realized, was the growing premillennialism in the churches at the beginning of the twentieth century. A leading scholar for the liberal Social Gospel was Walter Rauschenbusch who blamed premillennialism as an obstruction to social reform. University of Chicago professor Shirley Jackson Case wrote “[Postmillennialists] do not look for early relief through the sudden coming of Christ. On the contrary, they expect a gradual and increasing success of Christianity in the present world until ideal conditions are finally realized. Then will follow the millennium. . . .”[29] Alarmed at the effect the premillennial Scofield Bible was having in America after World War I, Chester McCown complained,”the nerve of active Christian endeavor is in danger of being slowly paralyzed.”[30]

Features of Postmillennialism. Again, let’s view the three checkpoints given in Table 1 just as we did for premillennialism and amillennialism. As indicated in that Table, postmillennialism agrees with amillennialism concerning Christ’s return as the end of history, and it agrees with premillennialism regarding the triumph of the Kingdom of God over world culture. Since these two items have already been discussed above under amillennialism and premillennialism, respectively, they will not be discussed here. Only the last checkpoint, therefore, will be studied in this section on postmillennialism, the checkpoint at which postmillennialism stands alone against both premillennialism and amillennialism.

Evil Will Gradually Decline Before Christ’s Return. Postmillennialists are best known for their insistence that evil will be conquered before Christ returns based upon the grace available from His first advent. Boettner states the postmillennial position:

“[that] the Kingdom of God is now being extended in the world through the preaching of the Gospel and the saving work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of individuals, that the world eventually is to be Christianized, and that the return of Christ is to occur at the close of a long period of righteousness and peace.”[31]

To postmillennialists the great commission of Matthew 28:18-19 is not a command to merely preach the gospel, but to conquer world culture for Christ. Boettner cites another postmillennialist: “To reduce this great commission to the premillennarian program of preaching the gospel as a witness to a world that is to grow worse and worse until it plunges into its doom in destruction, is to emasculate the gospel of Christ and wither it into pitiful impotency.”[32] Bahnsen defines the essence of this viewpoint:

“This confident attitude in the power of Christ’s Kingdom, the power of its gospel, the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit, the power of prayer, and the progress of the great commission sets postmillennialism apart from the essential pessimism of amillennialism and premillennialism.”[33]

Accordingly, postmillennialists look for Christianity to become the controlling and transforming influence, not only in the moral and spiritual life of some individuals, but also in the entire social, economic, and cultural life of the nations. Any other view, say these scholars, bury the Christian in paralyzing pessimism. Rushdoony remarks:

“Consider the difference it would make to the United States if instead of forty million or so premillennials, we had forty million postmillennials. Instead of having forty million people who expect that the world is going to end very soon and that they are going to be raptured out of tribulation, consider the difference it would make if these forty million instead felt that they had a duty under God to conquer in Christ’s name.”[33]

How, then, do postmillennialists view passages like Matthew 7:14 and 22:14 which seem to indicate that only a few, certainly not entire societies, will be saved? What do they do with the apparent pessimism in Jesus’ Mt. Olivet Discourse (Matt 24-25; Mark 13, and Luke 17,21)? With the climax of apostasy in the book of Revelation? Their answer is to relegate these pessimistic passages to the period of Jesus’ ministry and the judgments upon Israel after the Resurrection. Boettner says that these passages “are meant to be understood in a temporal sense, as describing the conditions which Jesus and the disciples saw existing in Palestine in their day.”[34]

In recent years, to explain the theme of pessimism in the New Testament, postmillennialists have revived and developed a “preterist” scheme of interpretation. The

preterist interpretation places the pessimist and judgmental passages in the apostolic era instead of in the future. This approach was developed originally by Roman Catholic apologists such as the Spanish Jesuit Alcasar in the early 1600s to neutralize Protestant claims that the Roman church was the Babylonian whore of Revelation and would come to future damnation. Later unbelieving German higher critics of the Bible used the preterist approach to deny predictive prophecy. As Tenney notes:

“Alcasar’s suggestion was followed by some Protestant expositors, but the rise of the modern preterist school came with the prevalence of the technique of historical criticism. Since preterism did not necessitate any element of predictive prophecy or even any conception of inspiration, it could treat the Revelation simply as a purely natural historical document, embodying the eschatological concepts of its own time.”[35]

One of the most circulated postmillennial preterist commentaries on the book of Revelation today is by David Chilton. Chilton writes:

“The Book of Revelation is not about the Second Coming of Christ. It is about the destruction of Israel and Christ’s victory over His enemies in the establishment of the New Covenant Temple. . . .God sent the Edomites and Roman armies to destroy utterly the last remaining symbol of the Old Covenant: the Temple and the Holy City. This fact alone is sufficient to establish the writing of the Revelation as taking place before A.D. 70. . . .It foretells events that St. John expected his readers to see very soon. . . .[The ‘last days’] is a Biblical expression for the period between Christ’s Advent and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70: the ‘last days’ of Israel.”[36] Postmillennialism, therefore, insists that the pessimistic NT passages are not teaching that evil will persist until the end of this age; the passages apply to the past end times for the nation Israel. This age is the age of the Kingdom of God and will feature increasing righteousness until Christ ends history.

RESOLVING THE CONTROVERSY

In resolving the three-sided controversy over the millennium, one must discard all false issues and isolate the true issue. Claiming, for example, that premillennialism must be wrong because Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses are premillennial is as useless as claiming that amillennialism must be wrong because liberal theologians are amillennial or that postmillennialism must be wrong because “social gospellers” are postmillennial. Such claims are false issues because they are ad hominem arguments. To resolve the millennial controversy properly, one must define the true issue and then he must “spell out” the criteria involved in choosing one viewpoint over the other.

The True Issue: Hermeneutics. All parties to the controversy—premillennialists, amillennialists, and postmillennialists—agree that the basic issue involves the hermeneutics one uses to interpret the prophetic passages. How literally or how figuratively should one interpret such passages? (Remember the discussion above on Philo and Origen who showed the effect of hermeneutics upon how the Kingdom of God was thought about.) Ought one to interpret Isaiah 2:1-5, for example, after the manner of Hebrews 12:22, or does the Isaiah passage have a future literal fulfillment? Floyd Hamilton, an amillennial writer, says, “Now we must frankly admit that a literal interpretation of the Old Testament prophecies gives us just such a picture of an earthly reign of the Messiah as the premillennialist pictures.”[37]

The debate is not over whether literal interpretation yields premillennialism or whether spiritualized interpretation produces amillennialism. The debate is over which method of interpretation ought to be used in dealing with prophetic passages. Ramm accurately states the case:

“The issue among evangelical interpreters is not over the general validity of grammatical or literal exegesis. . . .Nor is the issue one of the figurative or non-figurative

language of the prophets. . . .We may further state that the issue is not between a completely literal or a completely spiritual system of interpretation. Amillennial writers admit that many prophecies have been literally fulfilled, and literalists admit a spiritual element to Old Testament passages when they find a moral application in a passage. . . .Nobody is a strict literalist or a complete spiritualist. . . .The real issue in prophetic interpretation among evangelicals is this: can prophetic literature be interpreted by the general method of grammatical exegesis, or is some special principle necessary?”[38]

Granted that the true issue is one of hermeneutics, and in particular, one of the hermeneutics of prophetic literature, one needs to employ certain criteria that come out of Scripture to decide the issue between literal and figurative interpretation of prophecy.

Four Criteria to Aid One’s Choice. At least four criteria may be isolated which can help the interpreter decide the issue. The more literal an interpreter’s emphasis, the more sympathetic he will be toward premillennialism; the more figurative, the more sympathetic he will be toward amillennialism and postmillennialism.

1. Implications of a Creationist View of Nature. One criterion deals with the limitations upon what can take place in history. When a prophecy such as that in Isaiah 65:25 speaks of the wolf and the lamb’s feeding together in the future Kingdom of God, the interpreter must decide whether this is a literal possibility in the zoological world. Can two creatures, a carnivore and a herbivores one in today’s world, actually coexist in the same ecological zone peacefully? Or is this imagery merely figurative of some sort of peaceful condition an eternal future Kingdom beyond mortal history?

To decide the question, the interpreter must rely upon the creationist view of nature given in the “Noahic Bible”, Genesis 1-11 of present mortal history. This “buried foundation” (Part II of this series) establishes the world view within which later Scripture was written. Scripture cannot be interpreted within the modern paganized world view. Given, then, the creationist world view, the next question is whether such a biological change would appear as a literal possibility? Were there ever changes in the zoological world of such a magnitude previously? He finds that there were. Not only were great morphological changes introduced into the zoological world by the curse (Gen. 3:14; Rom. 8:20-21), but the very same change between herbivores and carnivores in the opposite direction occurred after the flood (Gen. 9:1-7 cf. Gen. 1:29-30). In the case of Isaiah 11:6-9 and 65:25, then, there is a proven, observed precedent for the prophecy to be fulfilled literally in mortal history if one operates inside of a creationist worldview. That the potential among carnivorous animals for reversion back to a vegetarian diet truly exists even today can be seen in Figure 3.

Another interpretative problem is resolved in the same manner by going back to the creationist worldview. Kingdom prophecies make reference to heightened human health and longevity. Sickness and death, except for discipline against overt sin, will be unknown (Isa. 33:24; 65:20; Jer. 30:17; Ezek. 34:16). Genetic and birth-defects will be gone (Isa. 29:18; 35:5-6; Zeph. 3:19). The Kingdom will enjoy highly productive agriculture, apparently without the adverse weather conditions of today (Ezk. 36:29-35; Amos 9:13-14). Is such a geophysical environment with its linkage to human health a possibility within a creationist worldview? Of course. The very idea of Garden-of-Eden conditions (Ezk. 36:35) recalls the literal Garden of Eden that remained until the flood in Noah’s day. Human longevity between the fall and the flood averaged over 900 years. An interpreter cannot forget these parts of biblical history when he interprets geophysical “ideal conditions” in Kingdom prophecies. In short, the implications of a creationist view of nature inside present mortal history fully allow for a literal interpretation of the so-called “ideal” Kingdom environment. One doesn’t have to leave history for a new universe in eternity to experience such conditions. One, therefore, doesn’t have to leave a literal interpretation for a figurative one, either.

2. The Implications of a Creationist View of Man. A second criterion that aids the interpreter’s decision over literal vs. figurative approaches to prophetic passages are the implications coming from a creationist view of man. The “Noahic Bible” provides detailed information about man’s purpose, his language, his corporate structure, and his historical responsibility. Each of these details enters into prophetic interpretation.

According to Genesis man’s purpose is to subdue the earth for God (Gen. 1:26-28). Will mankind in mortal history ever subdue nature for God? Will the human race every reach its theological purpose before eternity begins? Both premillennialist and postmillennialist concur that there must be a triumph of the Kingdom of God before eternity begins. The Genesis mandate was given to man for mortal history when he was created “lower than the angels” (Psa. 8:5), not for eternity when he is to rule over angels (I Cor. 6:3). Moreover, since Christ is true humanity, He, too, will “fail” unless He carries out Genesis 1:26-28 before eternity. Of course, the NT points to just this victory of Christ “subduing all things” before eternity begins (I Cor. 15:22-28; Heb. 2:5-10). On this basis the amillennial approach of denying such triumph inside mortal history renders man’s theological purpose forever incomplete.

The difference between the premillennialist and the postmillennialist is one of degree. How far will mankind subdue the earth? The postmillennialist argues that the golden era which the Church is supposed to bring into existence will “not be essentially different from our own as far as the basic facts of life are concerned.”[39] The postmillennialist, therefore, would see mankind’s subduing some of its social problems and some technological difficulties, but mankind would not subdue all nature under its feet in the sense that the geophysical environment itself, human longevity, and zoological transformation would be included. The premillennialist, on the other hand, foresees a far greater degree of submission. He sees mankind (through Christ) as subduing the animal realm so effectively, for example, that a child will be able to lead a young lion (Isa. 11:6). To bring about this degree of subjugation, Christ executes a complex strategy involving hard-to-imagine removal of evil spirits from historical influence as well as the commingling of resurrected, immortal saints with millennial humans yet in unresurrected, mortal bodies. The precedent, of course, for such commingling of divine and human beings is already established prior to the flood (Gen. 6:1-4) and after Christ’s resurrection (e.g., John 20-21).

The creationist view of man points to the major tool used to subdue: language. From the first creative act God established the basis for human language as derivative of God’s language. God created instantaneously by His spoken word (Cf. Gen. 1; Psa. 33:9) and constructs the temporal flow of history with unforeseen (by man) “surprises” by His language (Heb. 11:3). Immediately after creation God instructs Adam in his proper vocabulary and then turns the “naming” over to him (see Part II of this series). God’s language is thus the “metalanguage” that stands behind human language and gives it meaning. Because human language is designed to name created things and to be the means through which man communicates with God, figurative meanings are not necessarily opposed to literal meanings. The figurative meaning doesn’t exist because “it’s the best language can do” when faced with a mystery it can’t describe literally. Instead of being an admission of incapacity, in the creationist view figurative language is the tool through which we conceive similarities in God’s design throughout creation. Dr. John Pilkey writes:

“The cornerstone of poetic vision. . .is the power to. . .reason synthetically. Poetry. . .subordinates differences to similarities. Ezekiel’s passage (28:11-13) tacitly fuses the King of Tyre with the prelapsarian Satan . . . . Tacit identifications of this kind are the bedrock of poetry. . .but they are as objectively real as anything we know. They seem dreamlike or unreal to us because of. . .our instinct to plod from one reality to another without perceiving the ideal symbolic connections. The poetic mind realizes that the king of Tyre and Satan were entirely distinct persons but that Ezekiel reveals a compelling ideal identity between them.”[40]

When, for example, Jesus speaks of John the Baptist as “fulfilling” the prophecy of Elijah (Mal. 4:5; cf. Matt. 11:14; Luke 1:17), postmillennialist Boettner insists that this disproves premillennialism’s insistence that prophecy must be fulfilled literally. As one espousing a figurative hermeneutic for prophetic interpretation, Boettner sees only the similarity intended between the literal Elijah and the literal Baptist. The figurative similarity, in his view, doesn’t supplement but actually replaces the literal distinction between two different historical people. John explicitly denied he was Elijah (John 1:21). The “fulfillment” statement by Jesus in context refers to the hypothetical situation of Israel accepting John the Baptist and the Messiah so that the Kingdom could have come at the first advent. Functionally, the Baptist acted in history just as Elijah had. This identity between the two reveals “the existence of a harmonious spiritual world, in which the distinction of soul between a John the Baptist and an Elijah takes second place to an identity of. . .divine vocation common to both men. The special world of Christian typology, for example, is nothing but a sample of a harmonious spiritual universe reinforced by symbolic identities from top to bottom.”[41].

Since, however, Christ was rejected by Israel at His first advent, the restoration of all things by Elijah remains in the future. The prophecy of Elijah could not have been literally fulfilled during the first advent. Figurative meanings in prophecy, therefore, do not necessarily replace or exclude literal meanings; they exist in Word of God to reveal the rational connections in God’s design for history. A prophetic text can carry both meanings and require both for complete fulfillment.

Mankind’s corporate structure is another feature than follows from a creationist view of man. All men genetically come from one literal Adam. The Bible looks, therefore, at history in a genealogical fashion rather than in a strictly chronological or geographical way. The Assyrians sprang from Asshur (Gen. 10:22) so that regardless of international labels that might later identify the group, it is the sons of Asshur who exist at the time Micah 5:5-6 is fulfilled that are meant in the prophecy. In God’s view the genealogical relationships are never lost. One modern evidence is the Hebrew tribe of Levi. Over 34 centuries ago God promised that the Levitical priesthood under Aaron would be “everlasting.” Interestingly, today there is only one Hebrews tribe which has still retained is distinctive identity before men—the tribe of Levi. Jewish people with the names Levi, Levine (derivative from “Levi”), Cohen (derivative of Hebrew word “cohen” meaning priest), and Kohane (alternative spelling to Cohen) preserve their tribal identity. If one tribe can retain its identity before men for many centuries, then it is not inherently impossible for other tribes of men to remain identifiable to God for many centuries. Thus if history is viewed in a genealogical light, there is no reason why prophecies concerning supposedly “extinct” nations cannot be literally fulfilled, amillennial objections to the contrary notwithstanding.

Finally, another aspect of the creationist view of man concerns his historical responsibility to His Creator. Because God is omniscient with a perfect rational plan incomprehensible to man, it follows that man’s reason is only a finite replica of God’s reason. He can see only a simple rationality that connects the present with a future prophesied state. Prophecy, therefore, by its very nature must be a very abbreviated view of the future. In Genesis 3:15, for example, a “simple” prophecy is made that somehow the child of the woman will triumph over the serpent. According to Genesis 4:1 Eve adopted the “simple” interpretation that she was the woman and her son, Cain, was the child, the promised one “from the Lord.” Many thousands of years passed, however, before the Child was born of a woman. The fulfillment of the Genesis 3:15 prophecy was far more complicated than Even could have imagined.

Prophecy becomes complicated with time because history involves men’s response to God’s grace. There is always “room” in prophecy for the interplay of true moral choice among men: man is never “programmed” by some created “cause-effect”/”stimulus-response”. Unless this fact is recognized, one would be tempted to conclude that prophecy has often contained logical contradictions. Noah preached, for example, for men to repent; had they done so, however, their action would have made the plans for the Ark too small. Jesus preached the Kingdom only to Jews (Matt. 10:5); but if the Jews had believed, their reception of Christ would probably have kept Him from dying on the Cross, a necessity for the sin problem. Nevertheless, such biblical prophecy has always finally come to pass in a non-contradictory way, though in a manner unvisualized by men at the time the prophecy was announced. Historical responsibility under God’s sovereignty introduces “surprise effects” that “stretch out” the original prophetic vision’s horizon.

Just as OT men could not successfully untangle the web of prophecies about Christ’s two advents, one in humiliation and the other in victory (I Pet. 1:10-11), so also men in this age cannot untangle all the prophecies about Christ’s second advent. There is no assurance in Scripture that His second advent will be “simple”; it may well involve various stages and be spread out as previous apparently “simple” prophecy became spread out. (Remember Daniel’s difficulty with God’s decree for Jerusalem’s restoration in Chapter 5 above.).16 When one faces, therefore, passages like Revelation 19:11-20:15 which seem to depict Christ’s return in a complex form and passages like Mathew 24-25 and II Peter 3 which seem to depict the return in simple form, it is wiser to let the more complicated passages control the interpretation of the simpler passages. The more complex passages simply contain more information and are closer to the final fulfillment. The premillennialist’s insistence, then, that Christ’s return does not end history, but that yet another era of history must pass before the end of history in the final judgment, is on sure ground. Amillennial schemes, and, to a lesser degree, postmillennial schemes, tend to be too simplistic, too reductionist, to correspond with the true nature of history and prophecy.

The creationist view of nature and of man, therefore, must not be neglected in our rush to understand prophetic passages of Scripture. Very specific truths come out of that view that profoundly shapes our hermeneutics for these texts. Now I will introduce the remaining two criteria for deciding upon the literalness of prophecy.

3. The Implications of God’s Historical Covenants with Man. We have emphasized in Part III of this series that God verbally and publicly speaks to man in history. Israel, we noted, is the only nation in history that claimed to have a written contract with its God. Although such contracts or covenants rest upon the creationist foundation of language, they are so important to the interpretation of prophecy that I have set them into a separate category. Whether we speak of the Noahic, Abrahamic, Sinaitic, Palestinian, Davidic, or New Covenant, a covenant requires unambiguous legal terminology. How else are the parties’ performances to be judged? Contracts and treaties need verifiability. The meaning of contractual terminology, therefore, cannot be “re-interpreted” later when things don’t appear to be turning out the way the contract originally stated.

The fulfillment of a historical covenant might be subject to “surprise effects” and time-stretching as Daniel discovered, but the covenant terminology is never radically reworked. The three promises to Abraham—the land, seed, and world-wide blessing—have to be fulfilled as they are stated in Genesis, or the contract fails. The land has to be the defined geography of biblical Israel, even if that is “stretched out” by centuries and continued into a new earth. The seed has to be genetically derived from Abraham, even if it comes into existence miraculously and/or by adoption into his family. The world-wide blessing has to encompass all nations, even if it requires awful judgments and involves “re-labeled” people groups.

The Sinaitic and Palestinian Covenants of Deuteronomy have to be fulfilled. The final regathering of the Hebrew tribes into their land envisioned in Deuteronomy 30:1-9 has to occur. The Davidic Covenant has to be fulfilled with a genetic descendent of David ruling over restored Israel. It may be that only believing Hebrews are permanently restored. It may be that the Son of David also rules over all the nations besides Israel. It may be the Kingdom of God is universal over all the earth. Nevertheless, the final fulfillment will be easily recognized as fitting the Deuteronomic text without figuratively transferring its meaning to the abstract principles involved. Premillennialism protects the integrity of these covenants whereas the amillennial and postmillennial views tend to dismiss their continuing importance.

4. The Implications of Christ’s Rejection. The fourth and final criterion also rests upon the creationist view of nature and man. And like the implications of the historical covenants, these implications, too, belong in a separate category. The rejection of Christ by God’s covenant nation created a very complex situation. No longer was history a straightforward movement into the promised Kingdom of God on earth through Israel. The New Testament introduced new revelation of God’s relationship to mankind after the rejection of His Son. Is this new truth the “final story”? Or is it part of a larger “stretching out” process in which we have a massive “surprise effect” due to man’s response to God’s revelation? In other words, is the NT the last revelation before God’s final acts that end mortal history, or is it to be followed by yet further revelation that will eclipse it with more “surprise effects”?

How do NT authors interpret OT prophecy now that Christ has been rejected? Many, many OT prophecies spoke of the Coming Messianic King. NT authors readily mentioned literally fulfilled prophecies beginning in Matthew 1 with Jesus as the literal seed of David. His virgin birth fulfills Isaiah 7:14. His birthplace is in literal Bethlehem (Matt. 2:1-6) and Joseph takes Jesus to literal Egypt (Matt. 2:13-15). Scores more literally fulfilled prophecies are mentioned by the NT authors [42].

Of deep significance, too, is the fulfillment of the OT calendar of Israel. In the spring of the year key national holidays were Passover (celebration involving the slaying of a lamb), First Fruits (celebration of the first of the crop), and Pentecost (celebration of the availability of wheat). Exactly on the literal days of Passover, First Fruits, and Pentecost, respectively, Christ (God’s Lamb) died, rose (first fruit of the resurrection), and the Holy Spirit came (making power available to the believers). Since the fall season of the calendar year included the holidays of the Day of the Atonement (national confession) and Feast of Tabernacles (celebrating the final joy of Israel in Yahweh’s provision), ought not one to expect a future literal national confession on the Day of Atonement and a future literal fulfillment of the beginning of the millennium on exactly the day of the year indicated by the calendar as Feast of Tabernacles? In other words, premillennialists would argue that since the first part of the calendar (spring) has been literally fulfilled at the First Advent of Christ, the second half of the year (fall) ought also to be fulfilled literally with the nation Israel whose calendar it is at the Second Advent of Christ.

The separation of Christ’s career into two parts with an intervening age in between “stretches out” the “simple” prophecies of his coming. When Daniel’s initial interpretation of Jeremiah’s 70-year prophecy was stretched out to 70 “sevens”, an intervening age of Israel’s partial restoration while still under Gentile control came into view. This intervening age was not seen in the pre-exilic period of the OT. It was a “surprise effect” under God’s sovereignty. While eternally part of God’s perfectly rational plan for history, it didn’t exist within the creation until the decree of Persian authorities to build Jerusalem. In analogous fashion, the rejection of Christ “creates” a new age previously unforeseen by men of prophecy.

While it introduces new problems of understanding, it resolves old problems of apparent conflict in OT prophecy. OT prophets were unable to figure out an apparent conflict between the “sufferings” of the Messiah and His “glories”. Even angels did not understand these things (I Pet. 1:10-12; cf. I Cor. 2:8). Ancient Jewish rabbis thought that the solution was that there would be two messiahs: the suffering Son of Joseph and the reigning Son of David.[43] The separation of the One Messiah’s career on earth into two parts resolved another apparent biblical “contradiction” showing once again that in God’s omniscience perfect rationality exists.

The NT reveals truths about this “new” age between the advents. Whereas amillennialists and postmillennialists see this new age as the final fulfillment of whatever

prophecies are to be fulfilled inside mortal history, premillennialists insist that this new age does not fulfill crucial OT prophecies. NT revelation cannot transfer kingdom prophecies that depended upon the triumphant reign of Messiah in Israel, to an age prior to that reign. That would reverse the OT order of events. Instead, the NT reveals truths about this new interadvent age. In Matthew 13:10ff, for example, Jesus began to speak of “mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.” He reveals new truths about the OT Kingdom of God made necessary by his imminent rejection and crucifixion. Nowhere does He change the idea of the “kingdom” from the literal physical and political kingdom to one of an invisible, spiritual one. In Acts 1:6 when the disciples asked Him about the kingdom, Jesus did not correct their understanding of the character of the kingdom but stated instead that the time of its inauguration was unknown.

The NT, therefore, built as it is upon the rejection of the Messiah, is necessarily focused upon a new age prior to the Kingdom that, according to OT prophecy, awaits the triumphant reigning of the Messiah in Jerusalem. This intervening age occurs because of a “stretching out” of OT prophecy, not a change in its direction.

CONCLUSION

The three-sided controversy over the final triumph of the Kingdom of God has been described from the standpoint of each of the three views—premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism. The issue is compacted to a problem in hermeneutics. How literally or how figuratively should one take prophecy? The matter can be decided by going back to at least four criteria that rest upon creation and God’s pattern of historic revelation. These criteria show that the physical, literal kingdom is rooted in a creationist view of nature and man. Its character continues unchanged through the NT era, preserving the integrity of the OT covenants and surviving the astounding rejection of the Messiah by the chosen nation. At no point is one compelled to abandon a literal hermeneutic for interpreting OT prophecy.

END NOTES FOR APPENDIX

1. R.H. Charles, Eschatology (2^nd ed., New York: Schocken Books, 1963 [1913]), p. 251

2. Ibid., pp. 315-16. The idea apparently came from reasoning that a thousand years of history would occur for each day of creation, history concluding with a seventh thousand year “sabbatical rest” period.

3. Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, II (American ed., Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1962), 435.

4. Ibid., I, 78.

5. Quoted in Charles Ryrie, The Basis for the Premillennial Faith (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1953), pp. 17-33.

6. See discussion in Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Hebrew Christianity: Its Theology, History, and Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: Canon Press, 1974), pp. 46-47.