Traces of Defeatism: A Critique Of Amillennialism
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TRACE ELEMENTS AND ESCHATOLOGY
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to a special series called "A Practical Postmillennialism." And if you are joining us, my goal has been to help make the end times practical. Because what we believe about the end times shapes the way we live in our times. If we think we will lose down here, we will not build down here. If the sky is always falling, we will be ever hiding. But, if God has a plan for victory, if He is going to use His Church to extend that victory, then you and I will live radically differently. We will work, we will build, we will take risks for the glory of Christ. And we will build! Which is what I have been encouraging in this series.
Now, in the first part of this series, I wanted to begin by sketching out the wrong views, the views that I believe have crippled the Church and caused her to become stymied in her mission. Views like dispensationalism, historic premillennialism, and, in some respects, amillennialism have produced a disengaged, disaffected, and demoralized church that has abandoned culture over the last fifty years instead of engaging it.
Now, in our first episode, which is called "Defeating Defeatism," we dissected the fragmented world of dispensationalism and showed how it produces a mindset of escapism, withdrawal, and victimhood among members of the Church, which leaves her bruised and impotent.
In our second episode, along with esteemed Bible teacher Gary Demar, we unraveled the futurist fabric of dispensationalism a bit further, demonstrating through one Scripture after another how its gloomy predictions of a future tribulation and turmoil have already unfolded in the pages of history, particularly, in the destruction of Jerusalem.
In the third episode, we turned our gaze toward Historic premillennialism, which seems a bit more reasonable than her dispensational younger sister but produces the same outcome as eschatological Darbyism. If dispensationalism can be compared to chugging a gallon of arsenic, Historic premillennialism would only require you to drink a glass. This, of course, sounds like an improvement. But, when you realize the small amounts that are fatal, the differences between these premillennial views evaporate.
Now, having thoroughly dismantled the premillennial notion that Jesus' Kingdom is still in our future and that it will not be inaugurated until the Church collapses and is raptured in total defeat, I would like to turn today to amillennialism, the next wrong eschatological position we will consider, before turning our sights on the correct view, which I will argue is postmillennialism.
Now, to begin, I have great respect for amillennialism. It is the majority view among reformed theologians today. It gets much right about the nature of the millennium, and there are streams of amillennialism that are more right than others, but I believe some of those strands have also contributed to the weakening of the Church of Christ. If we go back to our previous metaphor, amillennialism is not gallons or even glasses of the kind of arsenic premillennialism. There are many good things about this view. There is a sobriety and seriousness to this view that I very much respect and admire. But you do not need glasses or gallons of poison to get sick, either. Even if there are trace amounts of arsenic in the water, you can become quite ill. Today, I would like to describe what amillennialism is and why I believe the trace elements I am referring to will cause the Church to be sickly. This week, I will not get into a version of amillennialism called the Radical Two Kingdoms. I am saving that one for next week when I interview Dr. Glenn Sunshine on these matters. This week, I will describe amillennialism, how it came about, why it is an incomplete view, and how it contributes to the defeatism we have been discussing.
PART 1: AMILLENNIALISM DESCRIBED
As its name suggests, amillennialism is one of the four primary views on the nature of the millennium, found in Revelation 20. In the same way that the "pre" in premillennial suggests that Jesus will return before the millennium, and in the same way the "post" in postmillennial indicates that Jesus will return after the millennium, amillennialism has something to say about the nature of that thousand years as well. Unfortunately, the "a" coming before the world millennium (known as an alpha privative) usually negates the word that follows. Like the "a" in atheist negates the word theism, one would assume that millennials believe that there will not be a millennium. But this could not be further from the truth.
Like postmillennials, the amillennial brood interprets Revelation 20 as a symbolic period of time. Just as God is not limited to the cattle on a thousand hills and will bring blessings to more than a literal thousand generations, amillennials assert that the millennial reign of Christ covers the entirety of His reign. Not just a thousand years. For amillennials, the reign of Christ is not a future event we are waiting on. Still, an event that has already begun was ushered in by Jesus' ascension and enthronement in heaven, so we are already living in Jesus' Kingdom now (A point amillennialism shares with postmillennialism).
Where amillennialism and postmillennialism part ways concerns the question of where Christ's reign occurs? Or a better way of saying it, where will Jesus have dominion? According to the amillennialist, Christ will have dominion in the souls of believers. The Kingdom they envision is a spiritual kingdom on this side of heaven. It is a church that Jesus ascended to rule over, which involves the gathered people of God, salvation, regeneration, and things like that. This makes it a kingdom that moves forward by the Spirit of God in this era through the proclamation of the Gospel to the ends of the earth and advances raising dead souls to life in Jesus, to which postmillennialists will cry out with a hearty, "Amen!" But where amillennialism stops short is in seeing Christ's dominion limited to the spiritual realms and only claiming back from the curse and the devil the fallen souls of man. To be fair, amillennialists do believe that Jesus' Kingdom will reverse the curse in the physical space as well, but that won't happen in the amillennial view until the new heavens and the new earth, which makes their view a bit more pessimistic than the optimistic postmils, who see the Kingdom of God impacting the physical earth (as the Scriptures say) to a much larger degree.
In sum, the emphasis in amillennialism on God's sovereignty, the already-not-yet tension of the Kingdom of God, and the spiritual nature of the Christian's current reign with Christ underscore a view of eschatology that is hopeful and sober at the exact same time. As said before, this view is overwhelmingly better than premillennialism and is more consistent with the truths of Reformed Theology, which has made this view a staple in the history of the Church.
PART 2: AMILLENNIALISM'S HISTORY
THE ANCIENT WORLD
Like premillennialism, the amillennial view goes all the way back to the ancient Church. It draws upon early Jewish eschatological teachings, interpretations of various New Testament texts, and the influential writings of early church fathers, notably Augustine of Hippo. It should be noted that amillennialism and postmillennialism were the same position for much of church history, especially in ancient church history, since the distinction between them was not really developed until after the Reformation. In that sense, both views are amillennial since they see Jesus reigning now in a non-literal symbolic period, and both views are postmillennial in that they both agree Jesus will return after His millennial reign. Additional nuances that now draw sharper distinctions between these positions did not really exist in church history, which means to tell the history of amillennialism, in some way, is to also tell the story of postmillennialism and vice versa.
The origins of amillennialism can be traced back to early Jewish eschatological thinking, exemplified in the apocalyptic literature of books such as Daniel and the pseudepigraphical book of Enoch. While these texts provided a framework for understanding the end times, they did not explicitly articulate a concept for a physical millennium on earth that is manifest with the material advancing of Jesus' Kingdom in the here and now. This allowed early Christian adaptations of these eschatological ideas, especially during the rise of Gnosticism in the second century (which valued the spiritual things over and above the physical), to adopt a spiritualistic view of the millennium and what it would accomplish.
While allegorical methods of interpreting the millennium can be found as early as Origen, in the second century, amillennialism did not undergo rigorous theological development until the time of Augustine of Hippo, whose "City of God" argued for an allegorical reading of Revelation. Augustine posited that the millennium had already been inaugurated, made manifest through the ascension of Christ, and demonstrated on earth through the gathered Church, which challenged the more literal approach of Chiliasm or premillennialism, which put all these realities in the future.
Augustine's contributions were instrumental in shaping the theological underpinnings of amillennialism, emphasizing a spiritual kingdom that grows alongside the world's Kingdom to the end. In Augustine's amillennialism, the Church and the world grow simultaneously, swallowing up the indifferent middle and polarizing the world and the Church down theological lines until Jesus returns. Instead of making progress in the world and taking back territory from Satan, amillennialism views the struggle of history as two grand entrenchments where the city of God and the city of man grow more completely opposed to one another.
This early Christian response to Chiliasm (literal 1000-year future millennialism) further solidified amillennial / postmillennial thinking as the dominant view in the late ancient Church. This opposition was not a doctrinal rejection of the literal millennium but a broader theological assertion that favored symbolic interpretations of eschatological scriptures. This gradual shift towards understanding the Kingdom of God in spiritual terms eventually displaced literalistic futurism as the hermeneutical approach to Scripture by the time Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire. Unlike premillennialism, which went the way of the dodo bird, amillennialism and postmillennialism remained and continued into the Middle Ages.
THE MIDDLE AGES
The transition of amillennialism into the Middle Ages was significantly influenced, as said before, by Augustine of Hippo, whose allegorical interpretation of Revelation 20 in "The City of God" redefined the millennium for more than a millennium of future Christians. This symbolic view of the one thousand years corresponding to Jesus' reign set the stage for medieval theology's broader acceptance of amillennial views. Augustine's emphasis on the City of God as a spiritual realm rather than a physical kingdom laid the groundwork for the medieval Church's eschatological thinking that was to come.
In the early medieval period, there was little development in eschatological thought beyond Augustine's foundational views, as the Church focused more on the institutional establishment of the Church and later on doctrinal consolidation after the Great Schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. The rise of Scholasticism in the High Middle Ages introduced a new methodological approach to theology, which became the fertile soil for new developments in amillennial thinking. While not primarily focused on eschatology, figures like Thomas Aquinas influenced the systematic and theological landscape such that amillennialism/postmillennialism would continue to be the predominant eschatological view within church history.
The late medieval period, however, saw the sudden rise of mysticism creeping into the Church, which I would argue is where postmillennialism and amillennialism began to ever so slightly fissure into distinct eschatological views. Since medieval mysticism tended to emphasize the spiritual experience of the believer over and above the physical, amillennialism began taking on a more committed spiritualistic outlook on eschatology as well as an increasingly pessimistic view of the material world and how much advancement the Kingdom of God could actually accomplish on this side of heaven. Like the premilennials, amillennials slowly began relocating time to the daydreaming of heaven, while at the same time avoiding the rigorous labors needed to build Christendom in the here and now, which contributed to its aloof and standoffish posture toward culture that still exists within her today. These days, adherents of amillennialism are far more likely to be pietists than Christian nationalists, and those themes began ever so slowly, almost indiscernibly, developing all the way back in the high Middle Ages.
THE REFORMATION TO THE MODERN ERA
The evolution of amillennialism from the Reformation to the modern era is a complex story that would take at least one and probably multiple books to tell. Between the theological debates, scholastic developments, hermeneutical nuances, submovements within the fold, and the significant figures who have shaped amillennialism's contours within the broader eschatological landscape, there is simply too much data to cover in a single article. This is because, in the post-reformation world, eschatology began to be an increasingly important discipline of study, which is why it has undergone so much development in the last 500 years as opposed to the first 1500. With this being the case, we may only scantly summarize it for now.
In the Reformation, it was Martin Luther and John Calvin, among other Reformers, who, in the 16th century, reinvigorated an amillennial / postmillennial perspective through their emphatic return to scriptural primacy over ecclesiastical traditions. Calvin's "Institutes of the Christian Religion" subtly endorsed amillennial views by emphasizing the sovereignty of God in salvation and a spiritual understanding of Christ's Kingdom. Although Calvin himself did not explicitly detail his eschatological position, his thinking provided the landscape for amillennialism and postmillennialism to prosper among future generations of reformed people.
In the centuries following the Reformation, amillennialism was shaped by theologians and confessions that sought to articulate a coherent eschatology grounded in Reformation principles. The Belgic Confession (1561) and the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) are pivotal documents that, while not explicitly amillennial or postmillennial, reflected its view by emphasizing the Kingdom of God as both a present reality and future hope, grounded in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Significant figures in the development of amillennialism and postmillennialism include Johannes Cocceius (1603-1669), who systematized covenant theology into Reformed eschatology, providing a framework that supported amillennial interpretations. Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) and Geerhardus Vos (1862-1949) further developed Reformed eschatology, integrating it with a broader theological system that viewed the end times in light of redemptive history, among others.
Likewise, the 20th century witnessed a robust defense of amillennialism against the backdrop of rising dispensational premillennialism introduced by John Nelson Darby. This is particularly true within American evangelicalism, where the dispensational onslaught was most fierce. Figures such as Louis Berkhof (1873-1957) and Anthony A. Hoekema (1913-1988) were instrumental in articulating a Biblical and theological amillennialism that emphasized the already-not-yet nature of the Kingdom of God. This theme has become central to contemporary Reformed eschatology to this day. Their works, such as Berkhof's "Systematic Theology" and Hoekema's "The Bible and the Future," provided a comprehensive biblical and theological argument for amillennialism within a Reformed framework.
Today, amillennialism continues to be characterized by its focus on Christ's current reign and the eschatological tension between the present age and the age to come. Modern proponents, like Michael Horton and Kim Riddlebarger, engage in dialogues that reflect ongoing discussions within Reformed theology about the nature of the millennium, the relationship between the Church and Israel, and the interpretation of prophetic scriptures. This tradition remains a vital part of Reformed theology today, offering a vision of future hope and renewal that is deeply rooted in the sovereignty of God and the lordship of Christ over all aspects of creation and history, and for that, it is commendable.
PART 3: AMILLENNIALISM'S KEY THEMES
The central thesis of amillennialism is that Christ is reigning over His Kingdom now, from His throne room in heaven. This means that the millennial Kingdom exists during a symbolic period known as the church age, which could last for a thousand years or one hundred thousand years, depending on the will and plan of God. The critical point to understand is that one thousand in the Bible usually does not refer to a literal number. It is like a child using the word bajillion. We are supposed to know that the Biblical author is using an all-encompassing large number that encapsulates everything.
For instance: 1) When God communicates that He will increase Israel a thousand times over, He is not communicating an exact percentage of population growth coming upon the nation. He is telling them that if they remain in Him, they will undergo the original blessing of humanity, and they will be fruitful and multiplied (Deut. 1:11, c.f. Gen. 1:28). 2) When God tells Israel that He will bless covenant faithfulness to a thousand generations, He is not communicating that 40,000 years of blessings are coming upon a people who obey Him. He is simply telling them that complete and total blessings are coming upon you and your children for being loyal, as opposed to the curses for covenant disloyalty to YHWH (Deut. 7:9; 28:15-68). 3) When God says that He owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10), He is not telling us that someone else owns the cattle on the one thousandth and first. He is saying, I own all the cattle on all the hills. 4) When David exclaims better is 1 day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere (Psalm 84:10), he is not communicating that the one thousandth and first day would somehow be better than being in the house of God. No! He is saying a single day in the courts of YHWH is better than all the days anywhere else. There are more examples, but I am sure you get the point.
When applied to the millennium, amillennialism rightly understands that God is not setting the limits of Jesus' reign to a measly thousand years. God says that when His Son ascends to the throne, He will reign unflinchingly for all the years. His rule will be unchallenged, without rival, without end, without limits, forevermore. Yet, while amillennialists comprehend and even promote this vision, they unwittingly put limits on the nature of Christ's reign, relegating His post-incarnation empire to a spiritual kingdom that will only marginally impact the material world before the eternal state ensues. In this sense, amillennialists agree with the premillennialists that the physical blessings described in the Bible will not come in until after Jesus returns.
In the meantime, amillennials agree with the Bible that Satan is bound and cannot stop the advance of the Kingdom of God. Yet again, they limit the effect of this advance to primarily spiritual outcomes. Instead of seeing the curse pushed back in material realms such as politics and governments being discipled and Christianized, education, music, and the arts being advanced by Christians again, medical and scientific breakthroughs coming by the hands of Christians again, technology and architecture pioneered by believers again, and the Church, by the Spirit, bringing the blessings of God to the nations in obedience to the cultural mandate, amillennialists adopt a binary and rigid form of two Kingdom's view that originates more from Augustine than it does from Scripture.
For this reason, amillennial pastors, theologians, and churches could be less interested in engaging with culture, since the subtle fatalism of the Augustinian view necessitates that the Kingdom of man will continue growing until the very end. Without the promise of that Kingdom shrinking, and without the hope of the Church advancing upon it, and Jesus' dominion infiltrating it, amillennials have sometimes adopted a posture of isolationism, doing good and faithful work in their churches (the Kingdom of God) but less so in the world (the Kingdom of man). Now, this is not to suggest for a second that amillennial Christians are necessarily aloof and always unengaged; my only point is that subtle assumptions in their eschatological system can cause them to be aloof and unengaged in culture, and I would even go as far as to say when they are faithfully engaged, they are acting more like postmillennials than amillennials.
Furthermore, because some amillennials attempt to read a coming future antichrist, a rapture of the righteous, a rebellion of the wicked at armageddon, a great tribulation, and a great apostasy into the certain future of the Church, instead of seeing these things as already being fulfilled in the first century AD (partial preterism), amillennials tend to be less optimistic about how far the Church can advance on earth, before the forces of darkness take over, forcing Jesus to return and eradicate them. In this way, amillennialism functions with a veneer of premillennialism hiding underneath solid reformed categories and thinking. But unlike premillennials, who ferociously argue that the promises of God will come true on this earth before we get to heaven, amillennials assign these things to the eternal state, which makes premillennialism, in some ways, more exegetically faithful than amillennialism. As mentioned before, these are the trace elements of spiritual anthrax that leave our amillennial brothers a little limp and sickly, when it comes to bringing all of Christ, in all of life, to all the world.
PART 4: IDENTIFYING THE TRACE ELEMENTS
As mentioned before, the same poison that totally infects dispensationalism and premillennialism shows up in trace amounts in amillennialism's blood work. And while the amillennials have been responsible for many gains within the Kingdom of God, this is an area where critique and reversal are due. In what follows, I will sketch out a few examples of where amillennialism's tendency toward an overly spiritualized interpretation of Scripture runs afoul of the text. In conclusion, I will show how this stifles the amillennial Church from vibrantly engaging culture and the world as God intended.
ELEMENT 1: OVER-SPIRITUALIZATION OF PROPHECIES:
One of the most common critiques leveled against amillennialism centers on its approach to interpreting prophetic passages, particularly those within the Old Testament. Instead of seeing these things as coming upon the earth, as the Kingdom of God advances, they either see them through a spiritualistic lens or relocate these promises to heaven. Here are a few examples.
In Isaiah 2:2-4, the prophet describes that in the last days, the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as the highest point on earth, and all the nations will stream to it. Isaiah also foretells that the Lord Himself will rule over the nations; He will bring His justice and peace upon the earth; He will end war and violence; and the nations will come to His Church to learn the law of God. While interpreting verse 2 correctly, seeing that Christ's first coming established His Church as the place where the nations will come for salvation (the spiritual fulfillment), they ignore that warriors will beat their swords into plowshares, that all of the nations will be under the rule of the Messiah, and that they will come to His Church to be discipled according to His law. Instead of a world growing more wicked, this passage communicates a world increasingly growing more in submission to King Jesus, which the text gives no exegetical warrant for spiritualizing.
Take, for example, Psalm 72, which is a royal messianic psalm. In that passage, the Messiah will come and restore justice on earth (v. 2-4), He will bring physical peace and material prosperity to all people (v. 3), He will comfort the poor and afflicted (v. 12-14), bring abundance to the fields (v. 16), His physical reign on earth will extend to all the nations (v. 8, 11, 17), who will come under God's blessings by being under the reign of Jesus (v. 17). The only way to make sense of these very material promises is to see them as occurring physically on the earth. You either have that happening in a future millennium (premillennialism), or these things will increasingly come to pass in Christ's current reign on earth through His Church (postmillennialism). Traditional amillennialists do not have an adequate answer on how to spiritualize these promises.
Look at Isaiah 9:6, which says that a child will be born unto us, which everyone affirms is Jesus. But right after that, it says that the government will be on His shoulders, which means He will grow up and be a King who rules. It says He will be both a human and divine King who is our Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, and the Prince of Peace. Then, it says this curious thing in verse 7 about this baby who is born in Bethlehem. It says:
"There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore." - Isaiah 9:7
There are two things Isaiah does not do in this passage. He does not say there will be a multiple thousand-year gap between Jesus' birth (v. 6) and the universal total dominion He is stepping into as King (v. 7), which is the kind of nonsense premillennialism believes. His Kingship begins in His royal birth, grows deeper in His adulthood, is inaugurated fully in His ascension, and has been increasing in every decade and century since, until one day they will be here, on this earth, in full as Isaiah predicted! The second thing Isaiah does not do is spiritualize the extent of Jesus' Kingdom, as many amillennialists are prone to do. He does not say this King will have a spiritual reign that takes over the hearts of men; he says His government and reign will take over everything! This includes both the spiritual realities and the physical realities.
Look at Daniel 2:35, where the Kingdom of Jesus was inaugurated by God (v. 44) during the Roman Empire, which is precisely what happened in His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. But notice in Daniel that the Kingdom begins like a little pebble and then takes over the entire world, starting with the Roman Empire (v. 44). This is precisely what Christianity did in the first century. This was not a spiritual takeover of mere conversions. This was an actual takeover of the Roman Empire, which fell at the feet of Christ in the fourth century and constitutes one of the most epic fulfillments of prophecy ever given! Why must we spiritualize this when the fulfillment is much bigger and better?
Think about Zechariah 14:9, which says the Lord will be King over all the earth. Or Genesis 12:3, where Abraham's seed (Christ) will bring blessings to "all peoples on earth." Or what about the global transformation echoed throughout the Psalms and the Prophets. Psalm 2:8, Psalm 22:27-28, and Psalm 72:8-11,16 depict a future where the Messiah's reign brings universal peace, prosperity, and righteousness on earth, a vision further elaborated in Psalm 110:1-2, which portrays a triumphant kingdom under the reign of Christ. Remember, the prophets Isaiah and Micah offer some of the most vivid pictures of this era. These are not spiritualized visions: Isaiah 2:2-4, 9:7, 11:6-9, 49:6, 60:3,12, 61:11, and Micah 4:1-4 speak of a time when nations will seek God's wisdom, live in peace on this earth, and prosperity will abound, with the knowledge of the Lord covering the earth as waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14). This universal acknowledgment of God's sovereignty is further anticipated in prophecies like Jeremiah 31:34, where a new covenant renders teaching about the Lord unnecessary because all the people on earth will already know Him. Daniel's vision of God's everlasting Kingdom (Daniel 2:35,44), Zephaniah's promise of unified worship (Zephaniah 3:9), Zechariah's prophecies of Gentiles seeking God (Zechariah 8:23), and the Lord's universal Kingship (Zechariah 14:9) all reinforce this hopeful outlook that amillennialism cannot really account for. They understand the success of the Gospel that goes forth into all the world but miss the fact that the effect of this Gospel will be postmillennial fruit in a postmillennial world! (SEE ALSO: Genesis 12:3; Psalm 2:8; Psalm 22:27-28; Psalm 72:8-11,16; Psalm 110:1-2; Isaiah 2:2-4, 9:7, 11:6-9, 49:6, 60:3,12, 61:11; Jeremiah 31:34; Daniel 2:35,44; Micah 4:1-4; Habakkuk 2:14; Zephaniah 3:9; Zechariah 8:23; Zechariah 14:9)
Even the great commission, the command to make disciples out of entire nations (Matthew 28:19), assumes a long-term, successful, physical takeover of the world that will come under the Lordship and blessings of Jesus Christ. In some ways, premillennials take these passages far more seriously than the run-of-the-mill amillennialists because they at least understand these promises will occur on earth, even if they do punt them into a post-rapture millennial Kingdom. amillennialism's tendency to allegorize and spiritualize causes them to minimize the scope of Jesus's Kingdom, to ignore the promises His Kingdom will usher in, and overall, it is to live in unbelief in the power of God!
ELEMENT 2: PESSIMISTIC VIEW OF THE CHURCH'S INFLUENCE:
Along with underestimating the scope of Jesus' Kingdom through the spiritualization of prophecies, amillennialism also underestimates the Church's role in transforming society, beginning with the Cultural Mandate(Genesis 1:28), where humanity is designed by God to steward and cultivate creation, extend YHWH's rule and dominion on earth, and to bring life and blessings into a material world. This project was not abandoned after the fall; it shows up again in the decorating of the temple (Exodus 25-27), in the building of houses in urban and pagan Babylon for the good of the city (Jeremiah 29:7), and in the commands to act justly and love mercy in society for society's betterment (Micah 6:8). Jesus' directives to His followers, to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13-16), further amplify this mission, underscoring the Church's call to influence and transform the culture around us; not to utterly avoid it! The Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) and the charge to be witnesses to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8) extend this mission globally, emphasizing discipleship that impacts all areas of life and culture (e.g., all of Christ for all of life to all the world). James' definition of pure religion involves caring for the physically vulnerable (James 1:27). Peter's encouragement to live honorably among outsiders (1 Peter 2:12) highlights the transformative witness of Christian conduct in town, at our work, and wherever else the sacred and the secular collide. Together, these passages articulate a vision for the Church's mission that encompasses both spiritual renewal and active societal engagement, embodying the postmillennial hope that through the Gospel's influence, the Church will play a pivotal role in the world's transformation before Christ's return, ushering in a kingdom that grows and flourishes in every corner of human existence. Again, amillennialism does not answer these verses in their context in any meaningful way.
ELEMENT 3: LACK OF PROGRESSIVE VICTORY:
The amillennial emphasis on a gradual polarization of the world into two opposing kingdoms does not align with how the Bible speaks of Jesus's Kingdom coming. It comes like a mustard seed that eventually fills the entire garden (Matthew 13:31-32). It comes as yeast working through the whole lump of dough (Matthew 13:33). It comes as a pebble that eventually fills the world with a global mountain (Daniel 2:34-35, 44-45). It comes, filling the world with as much of God's glory as there is water in the sea (Habakkuk 2:14). It comes like 1 Corinthians 15:25-26 points out, where Christ "must reign" until he has put all his enemies under his feet, and only then will the resurrection of the dead, and the eternal state come. Did you catch that? Jesus must reign until the entire world is under His dominion before the new heavens, new earth, and final resurrection will come? My dear friends, we must stop expecting defeat like our premillennial friends are expecting. And we must stop expecting polarization or minimal impact as our amillennial brothers are expecting. And we must widen our lens to see the complete and total work that God is doing, will keep doing, and will finish on this earth before He returns.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF TRACE ELEMENTS
In the three trace elements mentioned above (there are more we could speak about), amillennialism has accepted an overly idealized interpretation of key prophetic texts about the end times and a pessimistic view of both the spread of Jesus' Kingdom and the influence of the Church in the world. This hyper-spiritualization and pessimism are not consistent with the Biblical vision and have caused adherents to ignore, deprioritize, or misinterpret explicit Biblical promises that will come about on this earth before Jesus' final advent. While amillennialism is a much more faithful and far more Biblical view than Dispensationalism or Historic premillennialism, these eschatological tendencies have caused her at times to isolate herself from culture and to deprioritize how the Gospel will affect both the spiritual and physical realms. It has caused her to retreat, which has caused the culture to further rot and decay under an uninvolved watch.
CONCLUSION
Today, most amillennials are cautious about cultural and social engagement, rooted in the belief that the Kingdom of God advances primarily in the spiritual realm. Instead of seeing the Gospel and the Kingdom of God as bringing God's redeeming power and redemption to all areas of life, amillennialists see a Kingdom that primarily works to redeem the immaterial soul of man. This renders societal transformation efforts secondary at best because the more important work of saving souls and participating in God's Spiritual Kingdom (the Church, sacraments, and personal piety) takes priority in this life. In fact, postmillennialists would agree that evangelism, discipleship, participation in the Church and sacraments, and personal devotion to Christ are primary tasks. The difference is that postmillennial types recognize when you prioritize these things, when souls are saved, and when men and women are discipled, you do not arrive at an amillennial eschaton, but a postmillennial one.
Think about it like this, if the hope of amillennialism came true, and every member of the Church was fully engaged in worship, regularly participating at the Lord's table, being actively discipled at Church and abroad, and were personally devoted to Christ in all areas of life, then wouldn't that have an impact on the way they vote? Wouldn't that change the way they go to work, live within their neighborhoods, or interact with lost people? Wouldn't that invigorate Christians to create God-honoring technologies, hospitals, healthcare, music, and arts and to fill the world with the anthem of Yahweh's praises in every industry? Wouldn't discipleship and evangelism fill the world with more ardent and faithful believers seeking to consistently live out their Christian faith in all spheres? And when that happened, wouldn't it produce postmillennialism?
For that reason, I love my amillennial brothers and want to show deference and honor to them as their understanding of Scripture is robust and articulate. But I also want to grab them, shake them, and say, perk up little buddy; Jesus is winning! His Kingdom is taking back territory from the enemy. His Gospel has impacted this earth for the last 2000 years and in 2000 more - should the Lord wish it to be so - even more progress will be gained. And by the end of it, whenever that end is, the entire world will be under the thick covenantal blanket of God's incredible blessings, ushered in by the reign of Christ, over His Spirit-filled bride, the Church.
Join us next week as we consider a particular kind of amillennialism that is more wrong than others, a view called the radical two kingdoms view, but until then, God bless you, hope in God, get to work with faithful labors for your King!
