Premillennialism
Premillennialism, in Christian eschatology, is the belief that Jesus will physically return to the Earth (the Second Coming) before the Millennium, heralding a literal thousand-year messianic age of peace.
Amillennialism interprets Revelation 20:1–6 as pertaining to the present time, and holds that Christ currently reigns in Heaven with the departed saints.
Postmillennialism views the millennial rule as a Golden Age in which Christian ethics prosper through preaching and redemptive work,[2] but occurring before the second coming.
Premillennialism is often used to refer specifically to those who adhere to the beliefs in an earthly millennial reign of Christ as well as a rapture of the faithful coming before (dispensational) or after (historic) the Great Tribulation preceding the Millennium.
[6] Justin Martyr in the 2nd century was one of the first Christian writers to clearly describe himself as continuing in the "Jewish" belief of a temporary messianic kingdom prior to the eternal state, although the notion of Millennium in his Dialogue with Trypho seem to differ from that of the Apology.
"[10] In another place Irenaeus also explained that the blessing to Jacob "belongs unquestionably to the times of the kingdom when the righteous will bear rule, after their rising from the dead.
It is also the time when the creation will bear fruit with an abundance of all kinds of food, having been renovated and set free... And all of the animals will feed on the vegetation of the earth... and they will be in perfect submission to man.
Other early premillennialists included Pseudo-Barnabas,[12] Papias,[13] Methodius, Lactantius,[14] Commodianus[15] Theophilus, Tertullian,[16] Melito,[17] Hippolytus of Rome, Victorinus of Pettau[18][19] and various Gnostics groups and the Montanists.
"[33] Richard Landes observed the 4th century as a time of major shift for Christian eschatology by noting that it "marked a crucial moment in the history of millenarianism, since during this period Augustine repudiated even the allegorizing variety he himself had previously accepted.
"[34] Augustine's later amillennial view laid the eschatological foundation for the Middle Ages, which practically abandoned premillennialism.
[36] A notable exception to normative medieval eschatology is found in Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135–1202), a Cistercian monk, who to an extent, stressed premillennial themes.
XVII., condemns the Anabaptists and others 'who now scatter Jewish opinions that, before the resurrection of the dead, the godly shall occupy the kingdom of the world, the wicked being everywhere suppressed.
'"[38] Likewise, the Swiss Reformer Heinrich Bullinger wrote up the Second Helvetic Confession, which reads "We also reject the Jewish dream of a millennium, or golden age on earth, before the last judgment.
This is observed in the 41st of the Anglican Articles, drawn up by Thomas Cranmer (1553), describing the millennium as a 'fable of Jewish dotage', but it was omitted at a later time in the revision under Elizabeth (1563).
Michael Servetus taught a chiliastic view, though he was denounced by the Reformers as a heretic and executed in Geneva under Calvin's authority.
[44] Although they were not premillennial, the English theologian Daniel Whitby (1688–1726), the German Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752), and the American Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) "fueled millennial ideas with new influence in the nineteenth century.
Thomas Macaulay observed this and wrote "Many Christians believe that the Messiah will shortly establish a kingdom on the earth, and visibly reign over all its inhabitants.
The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.Whalen has noted that modern premillennialism is "criticized roundly for naïve scholarship which confuses the poetic and inspirational prose of prophecy with fortune telling", though "Premillennialists retort that they merely follow the Word of God, regardless of ridicule."
Historic premillennialism maintains chiliasm because of its view that the church will be caught up to meet Christ in the air and then escort him to the earth in order to share in his literal thousand year rule.
Proponents of the view include John Gill, Mike Placko, Charles Spurgeon,[54] James Montgomery Boice,[55] George Eldon Ladd,[55] John Piper,[56] Albert Mohler,[57] Francis Schaeffer, Carl F. H. Henry,[58] Harold Lindsell, D. A. Carson,[59][60] Bryan Chapell,[61] and Gordon Clark.
Dispensationalism traces its roots to the 1830s and John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), an Anglican churchman and an early leader of the Plymouth Brethren.
More recently dispensational eschatology has been popularized through Hal Lindsey's 1970s bestseller, The Late, Great Planet Earth and through the Left Behind Series by Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins.
Popular proponents of dispensational premillennialism have been John F. MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Ray Comfort, Jerry Falwell, Todd Friel, Dwight Pentecost, John Walvoord, Tim Lahaye, Charles Caldwell Ryrie, Norman Geisler, Erwin Lutzer, and Charles L. Feinberg.
