Thursday, September 10, 2009

Why I Am Amillennial: Part 2 (The one to read)

“Jesus is coming back! On this issue Evangelicals are united.” You can find this quote on the back of the late Stanley Grenz’s book, The Millennial Maze: Sorting out Evangelical Options. It is my opinion that differing historic “End Times” systems should be an issue of no-division. The early Church seemed completely comfortable with allowing each other to hold differing views of eschatology, specifically Amillennialism (hereafter: “Amill”) and Premillennialism (hereafter: “Premill”) – Postmillennialism (hereafter: “Postmill”) came about at a later time.

Search as you will in all of the historic creeds of Christendom and you will not find (at least not before Augustine) a single creed to narrow down Christian belief to a particular End Times system. You will not find – for example – in the Apostles Creed a statement to the effect of, “We believe in a literal millennial reign of Christ on the earth” or any variation thereof. For this reason I don’t believe we should allow our differing views – amill-premill-postmill – to divide our churches; we should not – in my opinion – have these views as a part of our denominational statements of faith. Each Christian should be allowed freedom to wrestle through these issues without having to conform to one view over the other at the compulsion of a denomination. Preach what we know for sure – Christ is Coming Back! – and leave the ambiguous details to God.

A History of the End of the World

Well actually this is a misnomer. I do not believe the world is going to end per se, neither has the Church throughout it’s’ history, and neither – I might add – does the scriptures. If by “end” we mean in the sense that the world “ended” once before by being destroyed or cleansed by water in the Flood and then recreated (Genesis 6-9) then I would agree, the earth will be destroyed and purified as in the days of Noah, only this time by fire and then it will be recreated (2 Peter 3). But if by “end” we mean that the space-time continuum will cease along with all physical matter and that we will spend eternity floating about in heaven, well that is not biblical. As Ben Witherington said, “It is never adequate theology to say ‘this world is not my home, I’m just passing through’ as if heaven were all that really mattered” (Imminent Domain p.53), because when heaven and earth become one (Revelation 21-22) then we shall forever be with the Lord… on this little round ball we call “earth”. But I’m getting off course; allow me to give a brief overview of the history of eschatology in the Church.

Amill is essentially (though sometimes debatably) the earliest and longest held view of End Times in the history of the Church. All of the Apostolic Fathers (first generation removed from the Apostles) were Amill save one – Papias. That is, Clement of Rome (after Paul), Polycarp (John’s disciple. Yup, that John), Ignatius, the Shepherd of Hermes, and the Didache were all Amill. Papias, whose writings we no longer have, was decidedly Premill – taking Revelation 20 literally (Premill here – and throughout this post – is to be understood as Historic Premillennialism, which is vastly different from the Dispensational Premillennialism which was invented around the year 1830). During the period of the Apostolic Fathers and Augustine individuals in the Church variously held one view or the other without contention. It was not until Augustine – who was decidedly Amill and wrote against Premill – that the Premill position was (in my opinion wrongly) declared heresy. For the next thousand years the Church universally held – more or less – to Amillennialism (as the Catholic Church remains today, though they probably wouldn’t call it that).

The Reformers where predominately Amill; though it was during this period that Postmill begins to enter the picture. Postmillennialism began to build major steam during the Enlightenment (naturally) and became the predominate view of End Times until their hopes seemed shattered with the onset of WWI. All of a sudden people began to see the world as getting worse (Amill and Premill) and not better (Postmill). Premill began to make a comeback – sort of, but not really. Actually, just before WWI broke out C.I. Scofield published his wildly popular Dispensational Premillennial Study Bible which would (unfortunately) become the number one selling bible in North America. With the sales of this bible, of Hal Lindsays Late Great Planet Earth, two World Wars, several block buster movies, bestselling novels, video games, TV evangelists’ shows, and the re-establishment of a nation called Israel among other factors; all of these worked together to fester a Dispensational “Premillennial” understanding of End Times in the twentieth century. Yet in the past twenty five years there have been some more popular attempts by writers of all Historic End Times perspectives to try and curve the Dispensational monopoly of our Americanized Evangelical cultural understanding of End Times. One just has to site books like End Times Fiction (by Postmill, Gary Demar), End Times Delusions (by Steve Wohlberg), A Case for Historic Premillennialism: An alternative for “Left Behind” Escahtology (edited by Craig Blomberg and Sung Wook Chung) and A Case for Amillennialism (by Kim Riddlebarger).

But who’s going to read these books? What exciting story to they have to offer? We are saturated in entertaining action packed thriller style End Times scenarios which excite our senses. It has not (and will not) be easy to dethrone Left Behind eschatology, not even with the scriptures in hand. But that is not to say it will be impossible, in fact if any of the historic systems are making a comeback today, I believe it is some variation of Amillennialism. We began this Church Age with this view, perhaps the Church Age will end with this view as well.

Why I Am Amillennial

What are our options? Postmillennialism has many similarities with Amillennialism, the big one being a symbolic interpretation of Revelation 20. Both these positions understand the 1000 years of Revelation 20 to represent symbolically the age of the Church in which Christ is seated on his throne at the right hand of the Father, while the Devil is bound in some way. What distinguishes the Postmill from the Amill is the nature of the millennium. For Postmill, the millennium is the Age in which the Gospel will spread successfully until the entire world – all nations – is converted. Four out of every five people worldwide will be committed Christians by the Return of Christ.

Postmill prides itself on having a “positive” approach to eschatology. They refer to themselves as the only tradition that can rightfully be called an “Eschatology of Hope”; that “hope” being that the Gospel will be effective worldwide, that the Great Commission will in fact succeed. I have two primary difficulties with this position: a) all traditions, even Postmill’s, acknowledge the fact that before the Return of Christ there will be a “Great Falling Away”. So no matter how “positive” Postmill’s believe their position to be, they must deal with this very negative reality. And b) history itself has (so far) attested against this interpretation. This is not to say the Postmill is wrong by default of not yet succeeding, it only adds doubt to this positions future. It could be that sometime in the future there will be a Holy Ghost fired up revival that engulfs the world thus proving the Postmill position to be right. Yet after reading several books by Postmills, I have not yet been convinced.

I could also add that Postmills have no right to claim a monopoly on the phase “Eschatology of Hope”. The Christians’ “hope” is not found in the success of the Gospel worldwide (though of course all Christians ‘hope’ for this among many other ‘hopes’ he have); in the context of eschatology, that is, in the context of the Return of Christ and the consummation of all things, the Christian Hope is found, not in a converted world, but in “the glorious appearing” of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Titus 2:13. This, according to Paul, is where all Christians should place their eschatology of Hope, and indeed we all do.

Like Amillennialism, Premillennialism recognizes that things are not going to get better, but that things will grow worse and worse culminating with the Return of Christ. The big difference between Amill and Premill, again is not that there is no millennium, but rather what is the nature of the millennium? As stated, Amill believe that the millennium is a symbolic period ranging from Christ’ first coming to his second; Premill on the other hand, while interpreting the bulk of Revelation much the same as Amill’s, read Revelation 20 literally. After Christ returns there will be a literal 1000 years in which Christ will rule on the earth with Satan bound. At the end of the 1000 year period the devil will be released, a rebellion will ensue and be crushed by Christ who then destroys the world and culminates all things.

I have several problems with this interpretation: a) the book of Revelation is the most symbolic book in the entire Bible. Why, out of every symbol in Revelation, is chapter 20 alone taken literally? This to me seems to be an inconsistent interpretative method; furthermore, b) if it is true – and it surely is – that Revelation more than any other book in the bible is dependent upon “the analogy of faith” (let scripture interpret scripture), then we have a problem with any interpretation of Revelation 20 that takes this passage literally: no other place in the scriptures is a literal millennial reign of Christ mentioned! There is also the problem of the Resurrection; c) other clear portions of the scriptures teach that we await one single resurrection of both the righteous to everlasting life, and the unrighteous to everlasting damnation, yet this passage in Revelation 20 seems to represent two (or more) resurrections; how is this reconciled with other portions of scripture (1 Cor. 15 et cetera)? The Amill’s answer is that there are in fact two resurrections, the first being Jesus’ own, and those who are “in Him” are also seated in heavenly places and “reigning” with him throughout this Church Age (as Paul says). We have also been given the Holy Spirit (who raised Christ from the dead) as a guarantee that we too will rise. This is the second resurrection.

So what does Amillennialism teach? I’ll allow another to define Amillennialism for me:

“When the trumpet sounds, things will take place simultaneously. Our Lord will begin his descent to the earth, the brightness of this event will put down Satan, and all the graves will be opened…. All the saints together will go out to meet the Lord and to escort him to the earth…. The unsaved… will be forced to bow the knee and acknowledge that this is of a certainty the Christ…. They will see the suffering Servant of the cross reigning now as Judge of the quick and the dead, and they will seek a place of hiding but will find none.” William E. Cox, (quoted in Grenz’s book p.152)

Of the three positions crudely surveyed here I find the Amill position to have incorporated the best of both. Furthermore, because this subject is so difficult to interpret I find the simplicity of the Amill position attractive, as Grenz says, “of the major eschatological chronologies, theirs [Amillennialists] is the simplest” [p.152]. To be sure this is not a simpleton understanding of things, but it is an honest one. I said earlier that I believe Christians should preach what we know – that Christ is Coming Back! – and leave the ambiguous details to God. But when you do this you may discover that you have become an Amillennialist by quite the accident. And when you factor in the archaic roots of this position it is difficult to not give the Amillennial tradition at least the consideration and respect it deserves even if, at the end of the day, it is to be rejected. But in the meantime, I find the Amillennial understanding of God’s word to be as consistent with them as Covenant Theology itself.

And that is why I am Amillennial today.

Derek

P.S. I welcome your questions.





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