The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Breakdown of Historic Premillennialism

I. Irreconcilable Conflict Over Millennium

The sharpest divergence was between premillennialists and postmillennialists, and arose over the prophesied millennium. It was jointly acknowledged to be imminent, inevitable, universal in its effects, and revolutionary in its results; but what was to take place, and how was it to be accomplished? Would it be the establishment of the long-awaited kingdom of God, to begin with a gradual spread of righteousness, peace, and prosperity over the earth, with Christ’s personal advent at its close? Or would it be ushered in by a cataclysmic end of this age, attended by the literal resurrection of the righteous dead at the personal, literal return of Christ in the clouds of heaven to end the old order and establish the new by divine interposition? Would the world grow markedly better or radically worse, before the glad consummation? Here was the basic line of cleavage, the supreme point of irreconcilable difference. PFF4 411.1

The list of participants in this specific discussion embraced the newly organized religious groups, as well as the older established denominations, the religious “heretics” as well as the orthodox—even the ecclesiastically heterodox such as the Shakers, the Mormons, and others. The coming millennium was the supreme topic around which all other last-day events revolved-the vials, the judgment, the cleansing of the sanctuary, the close of human probation, the new heavens ande arth, and the ending of all the prophetic time periods. We must pause to consider the principal schools of thought on the millennium. PFF4 411.2

1. THREE THEORIES ON MILLENNIUM CURRENT

In 1841 Alexander Campbell, a postmillennialist, in defining the problem, enumerates three theories of the millennium: (1)The James A. Begg theory-that is, the Literalist premillennialism of the British Advent Awakening, involving a thousand-year (or up to a 365,000-year) reign of saints over mortals;(2) Miller’s view of the regeneration of the saved, and their glorified state in the renewed earth, introduced at the first resurrection by Christ’s premillennial advent; and (3) the now common “Protestant theory,” of postmillennialism, withits long period of gradual improvement and world conversion before the advent. ¹ Leaving the full discussion of (2) for Part II, which begins with the following chapter, let us briefly survey (1) and (3) here. PFF4 412.1

2. POSTMILLENNIALISM MAJORITY VIEW IN AMERICA

Campbell’s designation of postmillennialism as the “Protestant theory,” and Bowling’s reference to it as the view “held by the great body of evangelical Christians,” ² indicate the predominance that view had attained at the time in America. It had been similarly in the ascendant in England, where in 1833 Cuninghame spoke of it as “a large proportion of the popular theology of this age” and “the common doctrine of the present day,” ³ also in Scotland, for J. A. Begg in 1840 called it “the usual view in this country, till within the last ten or twelve years” (although there were at all times many exceptions). ⁴ PFF4 412.2

3. POSTMILLENNIALISM PUTS GOLDEN AGE BEFORE ADVENT

Floyd Hamilton thus summarizes the expectations of the postmillennialists: a long period of peace and righteousness before the second advent; a golden age for the conversion of the world, including the Jews (any national restoration of the Jews to Palestine, however, being unrelated to prophecy); no emphasis on the binding of Satan, but a possible flare up of evil at the end; one resurrection and one judgment at the last day. ⁵ PFF4 412.3

Postmillennialism was popularized by the best-known British commentaries-Newton, Scott, the Cottage Bible, et cetera, which were widely read also in America. It was strongly entrenched in the American Calvinistic churches as a legacy from Jonathan Edwards, Hopkins, and others; and it influenced Methodism through John Wesley, whose Notes on the New Testament incorporated Bengel’s double millennium position. PFF4 413.1

Postmillennialism was also encouraged by the movements and conditions of the times. At the turn of the century decided ideas of human improvement were in the air-social and political reform, worldwide mission movements and Bible societies, and widening horizons in the conquest of nature. In America especially, a boundless optimism and activism, a feeling of being on the threshold of unimagined advances, and an enthusiasm for reforms of all kinds—for righting all the wrongs of the world-lent color to the hope of bringing in the kingdom of God through human activity, aided and achieved by the Spirit of God through an increased use of present means of grace. Indeed, many saw in the Great Revival and the foreign mission movement the very beginnings of the millennial kingdom, and strove to advance that kingdom by every means. It was, indeed, a beautiful, if unattainable, ideal. PFF4 413.2

4. TENDENCY OF POSTMILLENNIALISM TOWARD MODERNISM

In the earlier part of the nineteenth century this post-millennialism was quite evangelical in its emphasis on the conversion of the world to Christ through the regeneration of Jew and Gentile alike. Later, however, the emphasis on social reform increased at the expense of Christian doctrine, and the postmillennial hopes of progressive righteousness became allied with the humanistic and evolutionary doctrine of human progress. Thus postmillennialism tended to line up with modernism, with the creedal element virtually disappearing, and the main emphasis on church union and the social gospel. ⁶ It has been remarked that the twentieth-century development has culminated in “the modernistic kingdom-ideal, from which the Christ as King has quite completely disappeared, except in so far as He furnishes a nice historical tag for the ideal.” ⁷ PFF4 413.3

Although at times world conditions have raised the hopes of postmillennialists, the failure of World War I to make the world safe for democracy, or to introduce the kingdom, to say nothing of the frightful setback of World War II, has deflated postmillennialism. And there is a rising feeling among many orthodox Christians that the personal return of Christ is the world’s only hope and cannot be far away. Thus either pre-millennialism or a millennialism has an increased receptivity in the mid-twentieth century. ⁸ PFF4 414.1