This page is under construction…it is in draft form. Please bear patiently. Sentences are often half-formed as I post quotes and thoughts etc without always clearly marking them until the final version.THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION. You are welcome to read as food for thought.

This is not a complete summary or rebuttal of postmil, but rather highlights the views and some of the challenges of those views.

Background

It is a matter of settled record that the early church almost exclusively believed in a future 1000 years where Jesus would reign on earth with his saints.

Tyconius (a North African Donatist)¹ was the first to openly challenge the belief in a future earthly reign of Christ. Augustine, while having denounced Donatism, took up Tyconius’ views on the millennium, and is often claimed by both Amillenialists and Post-millennialists as the father of their eschatology.

Postmillennialism is usually the undergirding eschatology of theonomy, Christian reconstructionism, and Christian nationalism (CN). However, these movements don’t rest their arguments on postmillennialism.

Basic Beliefs

First and second resurrections

Like Amillennialism, Postmillennialism holds the 1000-years reign in Revelation 20, is non-literal period of time referring to the present age, during which Christians will be victorious in converting all nations, and against sin; Christ rules from his throne in heaven; The first death, is death to sin, and the first resurrection is spiritual due to the remission of sin. Unlike Amillennialism, Postmillennialism believes the second resurrection in Revelation 20 is definitely physical.

Partial Preterism

Postmils are basically a realised partial preterist. They hold that Jesus’ Matt 24 discourse was fulfilled in AD70 – that was the end, not the end of human history. This stems from a faulty hermenutic as explained in the page on Preterism.

World is going to get better (overall)

Postmil believes that the world will become more and more Christian, and at some undefined point, the millennium will commence. In recent decades the belief in a physical 1000 year reign has become more spiritualised akin to amillennialism, but many still hold that there will be a righteous reign of the saints in righteous governments on earth for 1000 years (or without end according to some) prior to Christ’s physical return. They believe there will be some setbacks, but over all the gospel will convert the nations. The credulity of this claim is not questioned by converts even though 2000 years from the first advent, and there is not a single Christian nation, and only a bare handful throughout all history.

They rely on passages such as

Abrahamic promise to bless all those “families” on the earth

“they gates of hell will not prevail against” the church

Kingdom is like a mustard seed’

The great commission – disciple all nations

Satan is Bound

²⁷ But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house.

Mark 3:27

Postmillennialist and Amillennialists take Jesus’ statement in Mark 3:27 to mean that Sastan is bound, and that Christians are possessions of the ‘strong man’, Satan. Satan will be released at the end to test the church.

This view was a very appealing view as the Catholic Church gained political, civil and temporal power, and to many, it would seem that Scripture prophecy and history were aligning. Augustine identified the ‘kingdom of God’ with the visible Catholic Church. Many denominations adopted Post-millennialism into their creeds, such as Presybterians and Wesylans.

There is disagreement in Post-millennialism as to how the kingdom of God is manifest. Some argue that it will occur as individuals receive the gospel and are converted, while others adopt a more social-gospel approach (change the systems and then people will change), and others still adopt a theonomist or even Christian Nationalist approach with the goal to overturn and transform all political and governmental arms into overtly Christian administration.

Church will be victorious

Major Criticisms

Postmil mostly appeals to emotions and empty rhetoric rather than any serious exegesis of Scripture. Postmil adherents frequently attempt to associate technical progress, along with social progress with an increase in Christianity; as though the latter caused the former. There was an undeniable benefit to the world through the ‘protestant work ethic’, but it is difficult to make the case that the Enlightenment of the 17th-19th centuries, which was foundational to much of the initial technical progress today, was the result of Christianity. The Enlightenment pushed religion out of the dominant worldview, and replaced it with unfailing belief in reason and science. And as for social progress, we now declare men can be women, and have created an economic system such that it is very difficult for a man to provide sufficient income for his family; our governments are more tyrannical than even some of the worst governments of history, having killed more in the last 120 years, than in the history of warfare; more hate Christ today than the whole of history combined.

Despite the idea of a mustard seed growning, Scripture actually paints a bleak picture:

1. You will not have finished going through the cities of Israel before he returns.
2. Evil men will get worse and worse
3. Narrow is the gate, and few find it.
4. The Beast will overcome the saints
5. Persecution, and more persecution – in this world you will have persecution
6. Jews not converted until he returns
7. Grand narratives of Daniel, Matthew, Revelation
8. Sit at my right hand until…cf will reign
9. The Whore/Beast reign until Christ returns – Rev 19
10. Kingdom not of this world – else my servants would fight//soldier does not get involved in civilian affairs
11. Dan 12 saints shattered
12. Martyrdom Rev – saints wait untill more are killed
13. Destroy with fire at Christ’s return.

1. Donatism was declared a heresy by the Catholic Church (AD.412-414). Donatists separated from Catholics (circa AD.312) arguing the belief that the validity of the sacraments depended on the presence of the Holy Spirit in the minister and that a minister who was not in a state of grace could not administer a valid sacrament. Any traditor (a traitor who gave up the Scriptures to avoid persecution) who administered a sacrament polluted the sacrament to such an extent that it was no longer a conveyor of grace. Not only was a traditor to be excommunicated, but also all those who held fellowship with a traditor. The church was to be made of “saints,” not sinners. The Donatists began to re-baptize Christians who had been baptized in other churches; in so doing, they separated themselves from all other churches and basically upheld themselves as the only authoritative church body.