We're going to begin talking about biblical prophecy and post-millennialism. This week I want to cover preliminary issues. And I want to have in mind question 191 of the larger catechism. What do we pray for in the second petition? That is, of the Lord's Prayer. In the second petition, which is, Thy Kingdom Come, Acknowledging ourselves and all mankind to be by nature under the dominion of sin and Satan, we pray that the kingdom of sin and Satan may be destroyed, the gospel propagated throughout the world, the Jews called, the fullness of the Gentiles brought in, the church furnished with all gospel officers and ordinances, purged from corruption, countenanced and maintained by the civil magistrate, that the ordinances of Christ may be purely dispensed and made effectual to the converting of those that are yet in their sins, and the confirming, comforting, and building up of those that are already converted, that Christ would rule in our hearts here, and hasten the time of his second coming, and are reigning with him forever, and that he would be pleased so to exercise the kingdom of his power in all the world as may best conduce to these ends. I've left out all the scripture proofs on this, but if you were here when we went through the larger catechism, question 191, then you'll have some idea of what I believe to be the biblical basis for this question. And I think this has a lot of guiding principles wrapped up in it that are very, very pertinent to the issue of how we're to view prophecy in the Bible from a confessional point of view. Now, the doctrine of last things, very often people refer to eschatology. What is your view of eschatology? The doctrine of last things traditionally has been called eschatology. It's from two Greek words, eschatos, which means last, and logos, which means words. So it's words about last things. The fact is that eschatology used to mean really simply this. We're going to talk about heaven and hell and the eternal state, judgment day, second coming. It was very limited. It was not talking about the whole field of prophecy. So properly speaking, only part of prophecy is taken up with what traditionally has been called eschatology. However, eschatology is a term that people use now to describe in a little bit more technical fashion what they mean when they're speaking about prophecy. So I want you to keep that in mind that not all prophecy is about end times. And I think there's a confusion there because so much of what is being taught amongst so-called evangelicals around the country and even around the world now, is pushing all prophecy to the end times. They don't see prophecies being spread out over the course of history. They tend to group it all at the end of time, right before and corresponding with Christ's return. That, I believe, is a mistake, and I think that's a misuse of the term, and this is why eschatology is probably not the best word. We're better sticking with the idea of biblical prophecy. However, even people with whom I would find a lot of agreement continue to use the word eschatology, mainly because it's become so pervasive in the discussions. What are the various schools of prophetical interpretation? There are five. There's a school of the religionists. There's the school of the idealists. There's a school of the futurists. There's a school of preterists. And there's a school of historicists. These are the five schools of prophetical interpretation. And to a certain extent, how you fall into one of these categories, as we're going to see, that's going to limit some of the choices that you have with respect to other views. I'm talking about schools of prophetic interpretation broadly. We're going to get to millennial views, which are, in fact, a separate issue. They're not unrelated, but they all bear a relation to these prophetical schools. So, the views of the religionists. These are really the views of the higher critics. tend to view prophecy from a very rationalistic point of view. Very often religionists will view prophecy as written after the fact. You know, Daniel wrote that because he already knew this or that had happened. There's a a line of rationalism through there. They don't believe that it would be possible for anyone to predict the future because they don't think the future is knowable. They usually add to this some different ideas that they have. They want to discuss things like Jewish apocalyptic literature or religious apocalyptic literature, religious apocalyptic literature and imagery. And they like to talk about the end time, just like they like to talk about creation, frankly, as if it's a myth. There's a myth about the way the world began, and this prophetical talk in the Bible is that myth about how the world's going to end. So they tend to be theological liberals who reject the idea of the Bible being infallible, They reject the notion of predictive prophecy. They reject the notion that there could be anything specific in view unless, again, it was written after the fact. Once in a while, they may concede this or that was a good guess, but that's because they're rationalists. They don't really believe the Bible. They don't think it's infallible. They don't think it's a word of God. They think it's a word of a cult of Jews in the desert. And then in the New Testament that you have a bunch of fanatical disciples of Jesus. Very often they get into discussions about how the early church was formed by a faction that followed Peter. and a faction that follows Paul. And that the New Testament is somehow trying to bring all of that together. And there's that Johannine factor, John, who's the apostle of love, trying to get Peter and Paul to agree. And they're serious about that. Because they think it's just a bunch of people fighting about ideals. You know, secular ideals or ethical ideals. They don't really believe in a supernatural anything. So they treat all of this as if this just fell from the sky through the hands of man rather than being the word of God. People just reached in their imaginations and grabbed it. But they also tend to view it, and for example, there's a very well-known figure in this field of myth, He's deceased now, but his name is Joseph Campbell. And he would follow how, like the Native Americans and the Hindus and the Buddhists and all of these different Native people around the world, how they conceived of different things like creation and the end of the world. And they try to string that along and put Christianity, Judaism and Christianity on that continuum. It's all part of maybe, for them, the collective conscience. And that's about as mystical as they'll ever get about any of this. So that's the first school. We're not going to spend any more time than what I just did. And I do want to point out, there are a lot of different ways that we could go about dissecting this discussion. I've chosen one. This is not to say that this is the right way or the only way. It's just to give you an idea of how some of these things fit together. Other people discuss it in different ways. I just happen to think that this is a good way to think about this and it helps make the edges a little bit neater, at least for understanding why we're going to opt for the particular view we will by the end of this. And by the end of this, I mean today. Because after today, we're going to go through the entire Bible and survey virtually every passage that has a prophetical theme. And I want to discuss them briefly, all of them. or the vast majority of them. Sometimes there's overlap. Sometimes there are passages which are repeated. We're not going to hit every repetition, but we will hit all of the main themes and a lot of the minor themes throughout prophecy so that you can see what is going on. All right, the views of the idealists. The idealists view prophecy more symbolically. So for them, Jerusalem is a type of your heart, maybe. They tend to view everything as a type and they reduce it very often to the individual. So everything in the Bible is really ultimately going to be sort of about you and Christ. And there's a sense in which they have some good ideas in there. It's true, Christ is the end of all prophecy. We need to see that he is, in fact, not only the center of history, but the end of history. And he was the beginning of history. The idealists shun literalistic interpretation anywhere. Even when I would argue, and a lot of other people would argue, that the Bible very clearly intends to be taken literally. There's no reason to think that we have something else there. They tend to view things as allegories. And while it may be helpful at times to view things in the Bible allegorically and derive lessons with respect to that, if we reduce all prophecy to allegory, we really don't have much in the way of direction. In other words, what we don't have is we don't have a relationship between prophecy and providence. That connection will be dissolved because all of this is going to have to do with the believer or the unbeliever. It's not going to have to do with the church per se, although sometimes the idealists will expand it to include the church. But they again they what they tend to do is make everything symbolic Now we're not denying That there are a lot of Old Testament prophecies that have to do with the church, and we're not denying that as Far as the true religion goes the church is Israel now that the church has taken the place of Israel in a spiritual sense. But I believe it's a mistake, and I believe the Bible's clear on this, it's a mistake that just because there is that theme, that covenantal theme running, that we dismiss the future of the Jews altogether. That they are not really a distinct people from the Gentiles and that there's no reason for that. they're simply taken into the church, but that there's nothing specific, prophetically speaking, now or in the future, with regard to the Jews. They spiritualize. And sometimes, sometimes spiritualizing is good. Sometimes the Bible tells us that we should be spiritualizing, we should be going down that road. But other times, there's really no indication at all that we should be going down that road. So we need to make distinctions, but the idealists really don't. All their distinctions between believers and unbelievers and they tend not to see any kind of literal fulfillment. They also tend, idealism tends to do one of two things. They either dismiss the issue of time altogether and place everything in what they would say is the already but not yet. That is, it's either being partially fulfilled now or it'll be totally fulfilled in what they would say is the eschaton, the end. That there's this tension, but they don't see any continuity from here to there. They sort of leap over everything in between. ignoring the time element. And yet the time element, as we'll see, I think has profound implications for the way we're going to interpret prophecy. All right, the view of the futurists. Futurists, and this is very popular, this view is probably the most popular among American evangelicals today, and as a result of that, it's having an impact all over the world. It also happens to be perhaps one of the most, if not the most, recent view out there, particularly one form of futurism that we're going to talk about in a moment. But futurism tends to place all prophecy at the end of the timeline. singing the first advent of Christ. And then they sort of treat history as a big gap where God isn't really saying anything to the church. You know, kind of stuck with the Bible. Some of them, as we'll see, go farther than that and start cutting down what part of the Bible we're actually stuck with. And then finally, somewhere toward the end of time, prophecy begins to kick in again, and we see fulfillments. And then Christ returns. And there are variations on this depending on your millennial view as to what to do when Christ returns with relation to the millennium. We'll talk about that in a moment. But Futurism tends to push everything to the end of time. The Preterists tend to view everything in terms of either the fall of Jerusalem or perhaps the fall of the Roman Empire. They tend to view prophecy as being fulfilled either in 70 AD or shortly after around the time of Constantine when the Roman Empire collapses on itself. So depending on which flavor of preterist they tend to put all of that, they front load their prophecy. All their prophecies are being fulfilled at the beginning of the time the church is on earth. It's all front loaded. They tend to talk about the last days and the imminent return and all of that, and that actually brings up some of the divisions in the Preterist school. There are partial preterists Who put all of the prophecies Right around 70 AD or shortly thereafter depending on whether they're Viewing it as being fulfilled in the fall of Jerusalem or the fall of the Roman Empire But they still believe that at the end of time Christ will return There are full preterists who believe that not only is all prophecy fulfilled, but they tend to believe that Christ returned in 70 A.D. when Jerusalem fell. They think that was the Second Coming. That's the other school. Now, of course, that's a problem. The full Preterists are clearly cutting against the grain of what the Church has historically confessed as far as looking forward to the Second Coming of Christ. If the full Preterists are correct, then the Church was not only was not only mistaken, it was mistaken in a very major way. Because the idea of Christ's return shows up as early as things like the Apostles' Creed. It's anticipated in the Nicene Creed. It's confirmed in the Nicene Constantapolitan Creed. These are all creeds in the first three, well, two to fourth century. Beside all the church fathers who were writing, who seemed to be painfully unaware of this idea that Christ had already returned. You would think that if you were living in the second century and Jesus had returned in 70 AD, somebody would have told you that this had happened. They seem hopelessly uninformed on this point. In fact, Paul condemns Hymenaeus for saying that Christ had already come. This is already something that had arisen at the time that Paul was writing. And as we will see, Paul already, by the time he writes 2 Thessalonians, which is one of the earliest of the epistles, Paul is already writing in 2 Thessalonians to correct people as to when Christ is going to return. He's correcting their idea that Christ could return at any time. He's in fact telling them, no, there are a number of things which have to transpire before that can happen. And what that means is this, with respect to going back to the futurists for a moment, The futurists have their own problem in that when John wrote Revelation, when he pens it, he does begin by saying, these are things which will shortly come to pass. If they've been waiting for 2,000 years to happen, and I understand why early church fathers might have been confused, some of them, on this, but 2,000 years is not shortly come to pass. It certainly means something other than that. So futurists have a great burden as well on this. Now that leads us then to the last school, which is a view of the historicist. Historicists view prophecy as being a prediction of providence, and the providence of God as, in fact, bringing about the fulfillment of prophecy. They view prophecy in terms of time, but unlike the Futurists, they don't put all of the prophetical events at the end of time. Unlike the Preterists, they don't put all the prophetical events at the beginning of the church age, the New Testament era, I should say. They view prophecy as being a gradual unfolding that will speak in some way or other to every point of history in which the Church finds itself, from the time that John wrote Revelation, for example, until the Second Coming and even beyond. They tend to view that in terms of the book of Daniel. Historicist they're looking at Daniel not as talking about something That is all wrapped up until the end of time but rather something that is an unfolding beginning at his time and Going on at least until the time of Messiah the coming of Messiah So the historicists are sort of in the middle of the Preterist and the Futurist in terms of the time factor. There are elements of Preterism and elements of Futurism in Historicism simply because Historicism is taking in all of time. Historicism actually also takes in some other elements. of particularly the idealist school in that it sees a continuity, a covenantal continuity, and sees a transitioning from the Hebrew church or the Jewish church into the Christian church. from what the New Testament would refer to as the synagogue of the Jews to the synagogue of the Christians. They see an unfolding in that way, that there's a development in the history of the church. And they don't view that as incompatible with their historical views. but they tend to view it more as an overlay. In other words, they're not going to hyper-spiritualize. The idealists are going to hyper-spiritualize. The historicists are going to say, we need to look at things and, you know, some things are very clearly meant to be taken spiritually, but other things are meant to be taken literally. And we need to understand prophetic language in order to understand where that line is, to have a sense of when we're crossing back and forth between being literal and being figurative. So Storicism really is drawing from the other three views that profess some belief in the Bible, that there is some value in the Bible that all of these other people would agree, or at least you would find a lot of people in those schools who would agree that the Bible is the inspired word of God. They're not going to argue about that. Particularly, the issue is really at a different level. It's your approach to the Bible. And part of that has to do with your presumption regarding prophecy. The idealists see prophecy as being something which is only going to be fulfilled in a figurative way. Except for the second comment. The futurists are going to see prophecy as something which remains to be fulfilled at the end of time. The preterists want to put it at the beginning of the New Testament era. The historicists are saying no. Prophecy really relates to all of the predictions regarding Christ and his church throughout history. There's a continuity, there's an unfolding. Those are the ways, the several ways of viewing prophecy. In conjunction with that, in order to understand the different possible ways that these can be mixed up, We need to consider the really three positions that are respecting the second coming in the millennium in Revelation 20 verses one to eight. If somebody can read that, if somebody has that. Revelation 20 verses one through eight. And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the Bible, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years. cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled. And after that he must be reduced to a little season. And I saw thrones, and I sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them. And I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for He neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, nor in their hands, and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection. On such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. which will go out to save the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. That's the only place in the Bible that talks about a thousand year period. Those are the only verses, and the controversy over the nature of the millennium and so on and positions respecting the second coming of the millennium are all based upon those eight verses. That's it. There are three possible points of view. One is that the second coming is going to be before that thousand years it's talked about. That view is called premillennialism. That happens to be the most common view held amongst Baptistic churches, non-denominational churches, which tend to be Baptistic churches. They just don't like to call themselves that. It tends to be the view of most people who would identify themselves as evangelicals in America today. It tends to be the view of most people who would probably call themselves born-again Christians. Premillennialism is simply saying that with respect to the second coming, Christ returns prior to that thousand years. That's what premillennialism is. The second possible view is that the thousand years is just figurative. That is to say that there really isn't a thousand years going on here. That it represents something else, like the Church Age. The people who hold that view are called amillennialists, which means no millennium. They don't believe there's a millennium. Amillennialism is the most prevalent view among conservative Lutherans. It tends to be the view amongst Roman Catholic theologians today. It also tends to be the view of probably close to three quarters of people would identify themselves as Presbyterian and Reformed today. That was not always the case, by the way, but today, certainly the majority of them, it used to be a bigger majority, but there are things eating away at Amillennialism in Presbyterian and Reformed circles in particular now, that we'll talk about in a moment. But Amillennialism, Amillennialism tends to say, look, this is the only place in the Bible where we're going to find that thousand years talked about. And most of the time, numbers are symbolical. It's probably not something really literal going on here. Um, Some of them just dismiss the idea altogether. Some of them tend to view the entire church age as the millennium. And they would claim, for example, on their part, Augustine would say, look, in the city of God, Augustine, he's writing as if we're in the church age. That's part of the rationale for the Roman church's position, to the extent that they take a position. They don't really see a millennium. They don't see anything like that going on. I think they're wrong in viewing Augustine in that light, but I understand why they're doing it. Augustine wrote in the late 300s and early 400s. And from his point of view, 1,000 years hadn't passed and it was possible that he was living in the church age. There was just going to be 1,000 years. That said, it is actually erroneous. Around the year 1,000, people were not really waiting for the end of the world. They weren't confused. You didn't have a bunch of people worrying about that because the year 1000 really made no sense to them. It was just a letter M. They didn't see a one and a zero, zero, zero. Didn't have all those zeros. Didn't, you know, look like anything particularly special to them. Wouldn't have had that kind of significance. And most people probably weren't even aware of what the date was around the year 1000. Anyhow, The third possible point of view here is this, that Christ returns after the millennium. The thousand years transpires and Christ then appears in glory. That's called post-millennialism. It's simply post-millennialism tends to believe That there is no we're gonna we're gonna adjust this a little bit in a moment, but Postmillennialism would say That whatever we make of that thousand years Christ is going to come after that Now there are variations of postmillennialism as we'll see in a moment you some take it to be an indefinite number for the church age, and others take it to be more of a literal figure. Post-millenarians, however, I would say, share this in common. They tend to view the end of history because of the millennium, the nature of the millennium, whether they take it figuratively or literally, they tend to believe that toward the end of history, there will be a period of time, a golden age of the church, wherein most people, the vast majority of people, will be converted. Now, pre-millenarians, depending on your flavor, They tend to view people during the millennium as being converted. You know, a lot of people during the millennium as being converted. Amillennialists actually are divided on that question as to whether or not, you know, a lot of people are going to be converted or not. Are there few to be saved? But I would say that post-millennialism is characterized by an end-time optimism. Amillennialism is not really committed to that. Premillennialism, because of where they place the second coming, which is before the millennium, they tend to be pessimistic about the end of time, but optimistic because they think, well, optimistic, I should say, they're pessimistic until the second coming and then they're optimistic after that. So they tend to be pessimistic prior to the second coming, whereas post-millennialists tend to be optimistic prior to the Second Coming. And all millennialists are divided on that question. What are the various divisions among premillennialists? There are actually a lot of ways we could divide this up, but I want to point out two ways. There's classical premillennialism. which has been around and has been represented at least since the early church. Some of the early church fathers have a view that is compatible with premillennialism. It was called, it was a Kaliastic view. It just means it's a thousandist view, the Greek word for thousand. They were almost certainly the minority in the early church, but they were a vocal minority. They believed Christ was going to return before whatever this millennium was. And their view Classical premillennialism was actually historicist. They viewed the period of time between the first and second advent as being, in prophecy, as being interpreted continually. They just put the second coming before the millennium. Historicist premillennialism, probably one of the last big proponents of this was a guy named Grattan Guinness at the end of the 19th century who wrote a lot on this and actually I think makes a lot of good points about some things from a historicist point of view. Classical premillennialists are actually historicist premillennialists. In the early 19th century, there was another twist put on premillennialism. A lady in Scotland named Margaret MacDonald had a vision that got picked up by Edward Irving. And out of that, through the brethren and John Darby, whose views were popularized in the Schofield Bible, a very new and unusual form of premillennialism arose, which is called dispensational premillennialism, or in terms of our prophetic school, it would be futurist premillennialism. So they view all of the prophecies as being fulfilled right before the Second Coming and then the Millennium. Now of the types of premillennialism around today, that is the most common view by far amongst people who call themselves evangelicals. This has been propagated by Dallas Theological Seminary, John Wolvard, Dwight Pentecost, These guys see the history of the church in terms of dispensations. And in fact, some of them get very radical in the way that they divide up the church age into dispensations. A lot of them think that we're in the church age, there are a number of them, extreme dispensationalists who actually say, we're living in the Pauline Epistle Age. The Gospels were for the early church, revelations for the church at the very end of time, but we're in this Pauline Epistle Age. They divide up the Bible. Dispensational premillennialists are notable for this. They really think that the Old Testament doesn't apply to New Testament believers. Classical premillennialism. Historicist premillennialism is actually a lot warmer to the Old Testament. George Eldon Ladd and Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, they were people who were more of a historical premillennial point of view. And they were also, there were some fundamentalist Presbyterians who started Faith Seminary in Philadelphia. They were of this point of view as well. They were historical, pre-millennial, which is they believed that prophecy was fulfilled over a course of history. And then, you know, the bigger prophecies about Antichrist and all of that, well, depending on who they were, some of them put it a little bit more toward the end, but a lot of them would have agreed with the reformers that Antichrist was a papacy and maybe Islam. That classical premillennialism, again, has been around for centuries. Dispensational or futurist premillennialism has been around now for less than two centuries. It's very new, even though it is what you will hear if you turn on most radio preachers, television preachers, they're all pumping it. You know, Tim LaHaye's Left Behind is all that stuff. and it's based on a vision that some Scottish woman had about the secret rapture. No one in the church ever held this view until about 1830. That should make you suspect about this view. It's tied in with other views, futurist views, Futurism and Preterism have a common origin. That is, after the Reformation, the Jesuits were in fact ordered to get these Protestants off the back of the Pope. As long as you view prophecy as being fulfilled historically, it's very easy to see the papacy in that mix as the Antichrist. The moment you say, well, all these prophecies were fulfilled in 78 day or all of them were fulfilled right before the second coming, it becomes much, much harder to make that connection. So the Jesuits gave us, systematically at least, they gave us this preterist and futurist view. So those are the views of premillenarians. And actually among dispensational premillenarians, interestingly enough, They weren't just, they weren't satisfied simply with this view that Christ will return before the millennium. But then they said, well, because they're futuristic, you know, the great tribulation for them is seven years prior to this. And they enter into this discussion. Well, does the secret rapture come before the tribulation? Are you pre-trib rapture? Are you post-TRIB? Does it happen after? And then somebody said, wait a minute, what about mid-TRIB? So now they have post-TRIB, mid-TRIB, and post-TRIB, mid-TRIB, pre-TRIB, raptures, all tied to the pre-Millenarian view. So you can further divide that. And then you've got another group that said, well, we're post-wrath rapture. And what's amazing about this is the secret rapture view isn't really based on anything in the Bible. It's based on a vision that some Scottish woman had in 1830. They're arguing about that. So just keep that in mind when we think about premillennialism. All right, let's talk about the divisions amongst amillennialists for a moment. Amillennialists are notable because they deny the millennium, right? But there are different kinds of amillennialists. A lot of them are idealist. After all, they see the millennium as being symbolic or an idea. They're idea-oriented rather than literal. It's spiritual. In fact, among the idealists in particular, they tend to view all of that as a recapitulation. They see cycles of prophecy going on. So the first group of all millennialists are idealist all millennialists. They view prophecy as spiritual and there's no millennium. The second group are futurist amillennialists. That is, these are people who don't think there's any millennium, but they do tend to view prophecy as being at the end of time. So these guys, they dismiss the idea of a papal antichrist altogether because they think the antichrist is going to be some big bad guy at the end of time. They actually agree with the futurist premillennialists in this. There's some common ground, and it's interesting when you hear people talk, if you've ever wondered why people sort of talk across these lines, it's because they may not agree on the millennial position, but they agree on the futurist position. The third kind of amillennialist is the preterist amillennialist. The vast majority of the prophecies happen in 70 AD or the fall of the Roman Empire. But again, he doesn't believe in a millennium. He just thinks that at the end of time, Christ is going to return. Now remember, the Amillennialist view could be that simply there's no millennium. Or they could view it as a figure of the church age. Some of them simply view it as a picture of believers beyond the power of sin in this life. They're very idealistic about it. And they don't see any, they don't even view it as a figurative number for the history of the church. They just view it as a number that indicates that we're beyond the realm of sin. We're in glory. Now among the post-millennialists, the post-millennialists, there are the preterist post-millennialists who tend to view prophecies as being fulfilled in 70 AD or the fall of the Roman Empire, but they have a view of the church developing into a golden age before the return of Christ. There's a sense in which I think that they're not much different from amillennialists, except that they're optimists. And some of them will tell you that between being an optimistic amillennialist and a preteristic postmillennialist, some of them will admit there's not a whole lot of difference. All right, the other possible view here, and I'm really only giving you the views that have been tried, where we know that there have been people staking out claims. The last view here is historicist and post-millennial. That is, we view history or prophecy as a continual unfolding of history, prediction of the unfolding of history. And historicist post-millennialists tend to be more literalistic about the thousand years, but not necessarily. They might combine an idealistic view of the millennium that's a little bit more figurative, but a golden age. So they could be, in that sense, they could be historicists all millennial, if you were to consider them that way. But again, they're optimistic, which is why they tend to get pushed into post-millennial camp. And they believe that Christ returns after that millennium, whatever it is. So, we could divide this another way. The fact is that amillennialists and postmillennialists actually agree in this, that whatever the millennium is or isn't, Christ returns at the end of time. Only the premillennialists are saying he returns before a millennium. The historical or classical premillennialists and postmillennialists, historical postmillennialists, agree that prophecy is to be interpreted historically. And I think that's an important thing. The fact is this. The earliest church gives every indication that they understood these prophecies to be historically unfolded and unveiled. They give no indication that they thought that prophecy was all for the end of time right before the second coming. Now they differed in this in the early church. A minority, a vocal minority, said no, Christ returns before the millennium. The vast majority of the church, however, said he returns after the millennium. Now, whether they originally were thinking in terms of the millennium as being literal or not, it's hard to say, because when you're living in the first thousand years of the church, it's hard to envision, you know, this could be, as they see the church expanding, this could be the millennium, right? It's getting better and better and better for Christianity. So in the early church, when we talk about the early church, we're really talking about up to 500 or 600 before things started to really fall apart. For those people, it looked like history was getting better. So for the majority who are seeing Christ's return after this, Having a literal view of a thousand years and an idealistic view were really one and the same because they were living in their first thousand years. That's why I believe it's hard to tell what Augustine is getting at on that question. I don't think it ever occurred to him that he needed to make a distinction. After all, he hadn't even seen a thousand years go by yet. However, Augustine, and this is, I think, key to certain points against premillennialism. Augustine understood, and most of the fathers understood, that Christ's return was not going to be at any moment. He was not going to come back. He couldn't come back tomorrow. There were a number of things that they saw that had to happen first. For example, they understood that there had to be an unveiling of the Antichrist. They didn't know who he was, but there's no way Jesus can return until Antichrist is unveiled. They understood that. And that's Paul's point in 2 Thessalonians, which eventually we will get to and talk about. So the idea then that Christ could return at any moment, people who say that the Bible says that, they're obviously misinterpreting the Bible because Paul makes it very clear a number of things have to happen first. And the early church understood that Revelation made it clear that a bunch of things had to happen first. Where they disagreed was whether or not Christ returned before or after that millennium. And that question, the reason why the vast majority of the church came to see it as post-millennial, however you define that millennium, the reason they came to that is because there isn't a third coming. There's no rapture and then Christ coming to earth and then a millennium. What there is, is there's a millennium, whatever it is. And Christ returns, and those who are His rise to meet Him in the air. And that's Judgment Day. The resurrection of the dead, Paul says in 1 Thessalonians, follows upon that. There's no delay. There's no 1,000 years between the resurrection of the dead and the rapturing of those who are, in fact, alive. That idea of a secret rapture was made up in 1830, as I said. So the question then, based upon what we see in the Westminster Standards in question 191, if we ask what school is exhibited in the Westminster Standards, you know, the answer has to be this. The Westminster Standards are very clearly historicist. They view an unfolding of history. Look how they talk there about praying for the gospel being propagated throughout the whole world. It has to go everywhere. Then they talk about the Jews being called and the fullness of the Gentile nations being brought in. They're talking about the converting of nations. Because they talk about the church being furnished with all gospel officers and ordinances, and being countenanced by the civil magistrate. Now these are prophecies as we'll see from Isaiah, where Isaiah prophesies of the gospel era, that a time will come when the church is established on the tops of every nation of the earth. When Christianity prevails in every nation. When all the nations come. That's historicism. All of that, whatever else we want to say about it, it's historicism, and it's optimistic. They also, as we'll see in the Directors of Public Worship, they pray for the downfall of Antichrist, so they understand, as we'll see in the Confession, they understood the Pope to be that Antichrist in the Church. And that brings up the millennial position. Are they pre-, ah-, or post-millennial? Did they understand there to be a golden age? Well, I think again, if we look at the chapter on the second coming, they clearly put the second coming at the end of time. And that means they're post-millennial in the broadest sense. But are they amillennial post-millennial? Or are they really post-millennial? That is, are they amillennial, are they negative in general about the gospel? Are they idealizing everything? Well, I think that the answer is, first of all, they're not idealist amillennialists because they understand that there's a distinction between Jew and Gentile. They're not doing away with that in its entirety. So they're not the first kind of amillennialists. Are they futurist amillennialists? Well, they haven't pushed all the prophecy to the end of time before the second coming. They see a progression in the unfolding and propagating of the gospel. Are they preterist? Well, no. There's no way they're preterist because they don't see prophecy as being fulfilled solely in 7 AD. They certainly didn't think that Nero was the Antichrist. as these preterists today do, who claim to be confessional. They're not that. So they're not amillennial. So what are they? Well, they're historicists. They're postmillennial. But are they literal thousand years, or are they figurative thousand years, like a golden age? There's where it gets a little bit more difficult to define. And we're going to take the position as we go through, particularly when we get to this point in Revelation, that it's a literal thousand years. It may not be so clear in the standards whether they're talking about a literal thousand years or just a golden age. But given the fact that there was at least one very prominent historicist premillennialist, in fact he was so prominent he was the moderator until he died in 1643, given the fact that he was there, would indicate to me that people were thinking about it. There are sermons, particularly by George Gillespie, who was one of the commissioners, Scottish commissioners to the assembly, where he indicates a more literal view of this. It's certainly not outside of the boundaries of the standards. And I think that it's most in keeping constant with the faith. Because what it does is this. By remaining not only historicist, do we maintain continuity with the earliest church, taking the post-millennial position, we're representing the majority of the early church, maintaining a more literal emphasis on the thousand years, we're taking, I think, a much more serious look at and bringing into consideration the concerns of the early premillennialists in the church without falling into what I think is very clearly the biggest error and the biggest problem for premillennialism, which is placing the second coming a thousand years before Judgment Day. That's a problem. I think that's a problem any way you cut it, and we'll see that as we go through the Bible again and again. The Bible is very clear. Christ's return is met with not only the taking up of his people on earth, but the resurrection of the dead at that time. There's no lull in between. There's no thousand years between Christ coming and the resurrection of the bodies of all those who are dead. That's based on a misconception in Revelation 20 verses 1 to 8. And we will discuss that, but that's going to be a long way down the road. We'll take that apart and explain what I think is going on there. It's always dangerous to base that kind of decision on a tenuous interpretation of one verse, because that's all it's based upon, is one verse, one passage, when we have literally, as you'll see, dozens of passages which make it clear that the last day is Judgment Day, is the day that Jesus returns, is the day that there's a resurrection of the dead, is the day that inaugurates the new Jerusalem, the new earth, the new heavens, and all of that. So next time we're gonna begin, we will start with the book of Genesis, and we're gonna work through the whole Bible. We're gonna look at these verses point by point so that you can see very clearly that historicism is the right way to interpret prophecy, A. And when we finally get to Revelation 20, which is really the only place where we can go to make a decision on this question of the millennium, that by the time we get there, we will have all of this other evidence in our hands saying just what I just said, that Christ's return and the end of time are coterminous. There's not a thousand years in between that. Premillennialism is really left with this thousand years And they're almost, especially if you take into account the secret rapture and all of that, they're calling not only for a second coming, but a third coming. Because he has to return again at the end of the millennium. And very, very clearly, there's no third coming in the Bible. Next time, Genesis. Still Waters Revival Books is now located at PuritanDownloads.com. It's your worldwide, online Reformation home for the very best in free and discounted classic and contemporary Puritan and Reformed books, MP3s, and videos. 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