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042 | Four Views of the End Times
780 Plays4 years ago
In this episode we look at four eschatological viewpoints: historical premillennialism, postmillenialism, amillennialism, and dispensationalist premillennialism. We look at a little of the history behind these views, their implications, and why Left Behind can't be our lens for understanding final things!
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Transcript
Introduction to Verity Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Verity. I'm your host, Felicia Masonheimer, an author, speaker, and Bible teacher. This podcast will help you embrace the history and depth of the Christian faith, ask questions, seek answers, and devote yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. You don't have to settle for watered down Christian teaching. And if you're ready to go deeper, God is just as ready to take you there. This is Verity, where every woman is a theologian.
00:00:30
Speaker
Well, hello friends and welcome back to Verity Podcast.
What is Eschatology?
00:00:33
Speaker
Today we are talking about something that has been on a lot of our minds, which is end times theology or eschatology. Eschatology is the fancy word for
00:00:47
Speaker
the final things. And it comes from two Greek words, eschatos or final and logos, word or idea. And so when we talk about eschatology, we're really talking about when God brings all things to reconciliation or justice.
00:01:06
Speaker
and your first thought is probably the book of Revelation. So that crazy book at the end of the Bible with all of the visions and the bowls and the seals and all of that stuff going on. But we also see a lot of these same themes in the book of Daniel and there are other little glimpses of apocalyptic literature like this such as in John 14 where Jesus talks about the end times. And so
00:01:31
Speaker
We look at all of these narratives together. We look at them all together as we are forming our understanding of what the end times are all about.
Impact of the Left Behind Series
00:01:44
Speaker
Now, I want to get this out of the way right at the beginning.
00:01:48
Speaker
A lot of us are the left behind generation, and left behind really messed us up. A lot of us don't actually know the difference between the biblical account of the end times and what to expect versus the left behind books and the left behind movies, and so it's very important that we take the time
00:02:11
Speaker
to study this out for ourselves instead of allowing our lens to be a fictional account written by two well-meaning people but still a fictional account. So we want to correct that left-behind viewpoint and instead focus on what scripture itself tells us.
00:02:32
Speaker
Now, here's the other thing.
Overview of End Times Views
00:02:34
Speaker
There are four main views on the end times. And if you grew up in a church that only ever taught the pre-millennial view, which we will get to in a second, then you're probably going to be a little surprised that not only is the pre-millennial view the most complicated, but it's not the only view.
00:02:53
Speaker
There are orthodox views of the end times that don't even believe in the rapture. I know for some of you that is a huge shock. But the reality is that a lot of what is said about the final days is in very nuanced language. It uses a lot of symbolism, imagery, numbers, many things that in other contexts in the Bible we take symbolically.
00:03:19
Speaker
And yet, if we've been raised in churches that are interpreting these things literally, it completely changes how we think about the final things.
Key Eschatological Terms
00:03:29
Speaker
And I think especially right now, I'm recording this during, towards the end of the, well, I hope it's the end of the COVID pandemic.
00:03:39
Speaker
we tend to look at our current circumstances through our eschatological lens. And so if you are a pre-millennial person who believes that the rapture is coming and there's going to be a tribulation and then there will be a second coming and it's all extremely literal, like all those numbers mean exactly what they said, then you're going to have a very different view of our current circumstances
00:04:05
Speaker
And, and for some people, a lot of fear surrounding those circumstances. And so we're going to look at the four primary views. This is a really high level view. We're not getting too much into the weeds on this. And honestly, I could do an episode on each of these in depth and maybe someday I will. But for now, we're just going to do a light overview starting with some terminology.
Understanding the Church Age
00:04:30
Speaker
So as we talk about each of these views, there's going to be some consistent themes and words that are used. And I want to make sure we understand what those are. So first is church age. The church age is the era or span of time from the beginning of the church. So when Jesus ascended right around AD 30, AD 33 to the final things, which Jesus predicts in John 14.
00:04:57
Speaker
So that's the church age. The first coming of Christ, this would be when Jesus initially came, is born of a virgin, lives on earth from about 4 BC to 80, 30. So that's the first coming of Christ. The second coming of Christ is the bodily return of Jesus as king. And so this will be, this is agreed across all of the views. The second coming, Jesus will be actually returning to earth
00:05:24
Speaker
to rule and reign and to conquer evil for good.
Pre-millennialism vs A-millennialism
00:05:29
Speaker
But where we see some differences are regarding the millennium or the millennial thousand year reign of Jesus on earth which is described in Revelation 20.
00:05:40
Speaker
Pre-millennial Christians believe that this millennium is a future event and Jesus will return before it happens. A-millennial Christians believe the millennium is just a symbol of Christ's present reign among his people. So the A-millennial means no millennium. There's no physical thousand years. It is representative of something, of Christ's reign.
00:06:05
Speaker
post-millennial means Jesus will return after the millennium. So a thousand years is a time in which most of the world submits to Jesus. That's the post-millennial view. And we're going to get into this a little bit more in depth here in a second.
Exploring Preterism
00:06:21
Speaker
So if you've ever heard the word preterism, this refers to biblical prophecies about the end times applying to past events. So at the time of the writing of Revelation, these events would have been in the future. But for us today, these events are now in the past. So a preterist would see references to say the Antichrist as references to Emperor Nero. The tribulation would be like the Jewish War.
00:06:50
Speaker
And then you would also see things like the destruction of the temple predicted and that happened in AD 70. And so a preterist would see these things, these prophecies as being fulfilled in the first century of the church. A-millennials and post-millennial Christians both tend to be preterists.
00:07:11
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So, a good way to say this is that all preterists are either amillennial or postmillennial, but not all amillennial and postmillennial Christians are preterists.
00:07:22
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Okay, lots of really fancy words. You can, as I always tell my theology basic students, you can use these at parties and impress people.
Historical Pre-millennialism
00:07:31
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But now that you have kind of the terminology down, we're going to go and talk about our first viewpoint that talks about the end times, and that is historical pre-millennialism.
00:07:45
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So this was the original view of the early church fathers. And now we need to look at what the early church fathers taught because it does give us an idea of what was held by the church right away. What was the general view in those first few centuries? This does not mean that every church father was completely correct.
00:08:06
Speaker
So if you listen to the canon series or if you've listened to any of my work on church history, you know that some church fathers kind of went off the deep end. You've got Origen, for example, he became quite honestly a heretic in his latter years. And so there doesn't mean that these guys are on the level with scripture.
00:08:24
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but it does give us an idea of how the church was understanding these concepts and that in turn just gives us something to work with and a little bit more perspective on how scripture was being interpreted in those early years.
00:08:40
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So another word for historical pre-millennialism is covenant pre-millennialism. They believe that thousand year reign is a literal future event. This is what they believed. Literal future event. Jesus Christ would come and reign on the earth.
00:08:58
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as the church fathers died and as kind of Greek philosophy began to influence the church and people viewing the physical world as perhaps not as desirable, this idea of an actual millennium and an actual reign of Jesus on earth kind of began to fade. So a few other characteristics of historical pre-millennialists
00:09:25
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they are not viewing Israel as the centerpiece or as still receiving God's promises for the most part.
Early Church and Israel's Role
00:09:38
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The early church fathers were for the most part
00:09:42
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super sessionists. And if you want to know more about super sessionism, I have an entire free ebook on the 10 commandments on super sessionism and dispensationalism, more fun party words, you guys. And you can get that for free on my blog. It's about a 15 page PDF with scholarly sources backing up the information talks about the 10 commandments, why they're important. And then it talks about super sessionism.
00:10:07
Speaker
So what supersessionism teaches, and this was primarily held by those early church fathers, is that Israel is no longer the inheritor of God's promises because of their disobedience. Now there's a spectrum, there are different views within this supersessionist camp, but especially among the early church fathers, this was the view. It was called penal supersessionism.
00:10:32
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or basically Israel has failed to follow Christ, has rejected the Christ, therefore they no longer receive these promises. So because of that, any reference to Israel in end times theology, any reference to Israel in apocalyptic literature is symbolic of the church. So it is representing
00:10:59
Speaker
the church as a whole. So it's a spiritual Israel is what it's talking about. And they look at all the same sources that the other views will look at. They look at, you know, Thessalonians and Revelation and Jeremiah and Romans and put it all together to come to this view. And again, it was the earliest view among Christians.
00:11:23
Speaker
But one thing to keep in mind, especially when we're talking about the early church fathers and we're talking about end times theology, this actually crosses over a lot with Passover and Easter. And you may have seen in our recent shop launch, we launched an Easter e-book that talks about the roots of Easter, how it was celebrated early on and why it diverged from Passover. And it was a lot the same reason why we see this kind of not necessarily
00:11:52
Speaker
Well, a little bit anti-Semitic theology among the early church fathers. There was some animosity between the Jews and the Christians at this time, and it went both ways. There were Christians who were very anti-Semitic because they believed that the Jews killed Christ, particularly the Jews, instead of rightly seeing that all of humanity was responsible.
00:12:14
Speaker
And then there was also the Jews were very offended that here are Christians basically co-opting their legacy and adding Jesus on who they did not believe was the Messiah. So there was this bit of drama in those first three centuries, especially in the first two centuries.
00:12:32
Speaker
which influenced why Passover came to be celebrated so differently by Christians, eventually became what we know as Easter and also influenced a historical pre-millennial theology.
Easter and Passover Divergence
00:12:45
Speaker
So that's a little bit of the history behind that. If you want to grab that Easter celebration guide and e-book, it is in the shop on FeliciaMasonHeimer.com.
00:12:53
Speaker
I think all of us have been at a women's conference where we were told, you are a beautiful daughter of the Most High King. And it's true. But it's not the whole truth. The beauty of being God's daughter has some backstory and it's left out in a lot of messages preached to women.
00:13:12
Speaker
So if you're tired of hearing the watered down Christian teaching and you're hungry for a deeper spiritual life, I have something for you. It's my brand new book, Stop Calling Me Beautiful, Finding Soul Deep Strength in a Skin Deep World. Stop Calling Me Beautiful is a book about going deeper with God.
00:13:30
Speaker
I'm going to talk about pursuing the truths of who God is and who we are in relationship to Him, how to study scripture, how legalism, shallow theology, and false teaching keep us from living boldly as a woman of the Word. I'm so excited to put this book in your hands. You can grab your copy on Amazon, or for more information, head to my website, FeliciaMasonheimer.com, and click the book tab.
A-millennialism Explained
00:13:55
Speaker
So we've talked about historical pre-millennialism. Now, I'm actually going to head over now to A-millennialism. So remember, when you have the A prefix, that means none or no, so no millennium. The millennium is a symbolic thing. It's a spiritual reign of Jesus in the hearts of his followers. And this is according to a little document I have from Rose Publishing that sums it up really well.
00:14:25
Speaker
Christ's triumph over Satan was what restrained the power of Satan on earth. So there will always be persecution of Christians, but Jesus is reigning spiritually right now. And when he finally returns in that second coming, he will defeat evil for good. But up until that point, what we're seeing is tribulation and Christ's reign happening at the same time throughout history.
00:14:53
Speaker
So if you picture the cross as our starting point, almost like a timeline, and then you have Christ reigning, moving forward. And then at the same time, this tribulation and this persecution happening. And if you look at history, that is exactly what has happened. Christians have been persecuted on and off and in different areas of the world for the entirety of the church age. So this church age, according to the Amillennial view, is that Christ is reigning.
00:15:20
Speaker
and winning people to Him, taking them into the body of Christ, and then also tribulation and trial are happening at the same time. And so when Christ finally returns, all things will be made right and we will go to be in the new heaven and the new earth that He is creating.
00:15:38
Speaker
So this became very popular in the fifth century. So this pretty much followed the pre-millennial view. It was right after the historical pre-millennial view came this amillennial view, which
00:15:53
Speaker
perhaps was influenced a little bit by the Greek philosophy that didn't put as much emphasis on the physical as it did the spiritual, but it can also be argued biblically because the Bible does use the number 1000 figuratively quite often. You see this in Psalms 50, Psalm 90, Psalm 105, and 2 Peter 3. So the number 1000 can be used figuratively, and that was one of the big assumptions here.
00:16:23
Speaker
So a couple of people you might know who were amillennials, Martin Luther and John Calvin, for sure, J.I. Packer, and then there is some speculation that St. Augustine was also an amillennial in his eschatology.
Post-millennialism Beliefs
00:16:39
Speaker
So a big thing for them is that they focus on the fact that numbers represent concepts. And this is a Jewish idea. Numbers represent significant things like the number seven or the number six. Seven represents completeness. Six represents incompleteness, which is why the number 666 was perfect in completion.
00:17:03
Speaker
the opposite of perfect completion. And so keep that in mind. It's not like we need to go around hunting for the number 666. It's representative of something, and that should be kept in mind by you as a Christian, regardless of which viewpoint you end up holding.
00:17:21
Speaker
Okay, so that's the a millennial view. Now we're going to look at the post millennial view. This view is that the second coming of Christ is going to happen after the thousand year reign. So to kind of picture this, you have the church age and then you have this tribulation
00:17:42
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period where there is this pushback and there are evil forces that are at work in the world.
00:17:53
Speaker
But gradually, as Christians expose the world to the gospel, the world gets better and better and better. So post-millennials think the world is going to improve over time as the world is one to the gospel, and then Christ will return once that is accomplished and all the people who need to be saved are brought into the church.
00:18:19
Speaker
So the earliest point at which we see kind of this type of theology is around the 1200s, but
Decline of Post-millennialism
00:18:28
Speaker
some people do believe that Athanasius and even Augustine, again, we're speculating about Augustine here, were post-millennials.
00:18:37
Speaker
This became more popular in the 1800s, most likely because of the increased work of missionaries. This was the missionary boom when we saw especially Baptists sending missionaries out into the world to bring the gospel. And so there was this idea that as the gospel spreads, the world is going to get better and better. But historically, if we then look at the 1900s, what happened?
00:19:01
Speaker
I believe the people have said that more people died between 1900 and 2000 than any other century. So there was a lot of really bad stuff happening in 1900 and that kind of slowed the popularity of post-millennialism because realistically, looking out at the world, it didn't seem to hold water.
00:19:24
Speaker
So this view is probably the least popular view. But where we see this pop up, interestingly, as in two places, you'll see a pop up among some extreme Calvinistic groups. And you will also see it pop up among charismatic groups in a form called Dominion post millennialism. I don't know if you were homeschooled, but if you were, there was a small
00:19:53
Speaker
faction of very conservative Calvinist homeschoolers and the leader actually had to sit down a couple years ago due to a terrible sexual scandal, but his name was Doug Phillips and he perpetuated this idea of post-millennialism.
00:20:08
Speaker
where you have as many kids as you can, you preach the gospel, and the world will get better and better as Christians basically populate the earth. That is a form of dominion post-millennialism. Where we also see dominion post-millennialism is among hyper-charismatics. So you might be familiar with this idea of asking God to bind Satan, and God is binding Satan, and as the church recognizes its power,
00:20:38
Speaker
and walks out in the power of the Holy Spirit, then the world is one for Christ and we see the world improve.
00:20:47
Speaker
I think you'll see a lot of this kind of theology emerging in kind of the seven mountains theology, you know, where we talk about the different mountains of society, whether that's media and entertainment or politics, things like that, that some charismatic groups will say, we need to take dominion in these areas so that we can change the world for Christ, and therefore it will get better and better until he returns. That's dominion post-millennialism.
00:21:13
Speaker
I have to tell you guys though, after 2020, I saw an article come out on the Babylon B, which I'm actually not a huge fan of satire. I don't really like the Babylon B, but I will say this, this article came out and it made me chuckle because it basically said in the headline, post-millennialism drops out of the eschatological race. I got such a kick out of it.
00:21:40
Speaker
because after 2020, the reality is I think a lot of us would see post-millennialism as not holding very much water.
Dispensational Pre-millennialism
00:21:50
Speaker
The very last view we're going to talk about today is dispensational pre-millennialism. This is the view that if you grew up on left behind, this is the one that you were familiar with.
00:22:05
Speaker
Dispensational premillennialism, if I were to draw it out for you, draw a timeline of this framework on a whiteboard for you, is the most complicated of all of these views. So far we've talked about historical premillennialism, which basically says the church age is happening, society's growing evil, there's a great persecution, Christ returns and then he reigns in an actual thousand year
00:22:34
Speaker
millennium, and then all things are restored. Pretty straightforward. The amillennial view is even more straightforward. It just says Jesus came, he died, he ascended, and the church age happened, and is persecuted the entire time, and then Jesus returns.
00:22:51
Speaker
And then, of course, with the post millennium view, you have the church age where society gradually improves, then there's a persecution, and then Jesus returns. Again, very simple. But with dispensational premillennialism, everything is chopped up. And the reason for that is that dispensationalism tends to do this to the entire Bible.
00:23:16
Speaker
This is a very recent theology, kind of like post-millennialism. It developed in the mid to late 1800s and it was popularized by a scholar named C.I. Scofield who wrote the Scofield Reference Bible.
00:23:31
Speaker
This Bible made pre-millennial or dispensational pre-millennial views popular and especially among fundamentalist Baptist churches and really any non-Calvinist church eventually was exposed to this theology. So this is the belief that Jesus will come back to earth after a seven-year tribulation and will rule during a literal thousand years of peace on earth.
00:23:59
Speaker
The one characteristic of premillennialism, well there's a few, but one of the characteristics of it is it's extremely pro-Israel. Israel is a centerpiece of premillennial theology and it's one of the reasons you will see Christians who are unabashedly pro-Israel in politics, perhaps without even realizing why. It comes back to dispensational premillennialism.
00:24:25
Speaker
Israel here is the actual city, or excuse me, the actual state, the actual country of Israel. The regathering of Israel as a recognized state in the 1940s is viewed as a significant fulfillment of prophecy by dispensational pre-millennialists, even though among Jews themselves, there are some who believe that the Messiah was supposed to regather Israel, not the state.
00:24:53
Speaker
So you even have some conflict among Jews themselves on the prospect of the regathering of Israel, but dispensational Christians tend to view it as a universally good thing and also a prophetic fulfillment.
00:25:08
Speaker
So again, this became popular in the 1800s. It expanded among Christians, especially Arminian Christians, and was popularized by such people as Scofield, Hal Lindsey, Chuck Smith, Charles Ryrie, Tim LaHaye, and even John MacArthur. So this view is very popular. It's pretty well known. Few things to know about it.
00:25:36
Speaker
Dispensationalists believe that the rapture and the second coming of Jesus are two separate events. And we're actually going to look at the passage they cite regarding the rapture because this concept of a rapture is a very recent doctrine. It's pretty much non-existent in church history up until this point in the 1800s.
00:25:54
Speaker
And it's taken from 1 Thessalonians 4, which says, For this we declare to you by a word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with the cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
00:26:17
Speaker
Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord." This being caught up in the air is the concept that was adopted as the rapture.
Understanding the Rapture
00:26:33
Speaker
Now here's the important thing to know.
00:26:36
Speaker
But the Bible does not teach a secret or silent rapture. So what you saw and left behind about people's clothes being left behind and just being zapped out of everywhere all of a sudden
00:26:52
Speaker
That's not what scripture teaches. If you noticed, in Thessalonians, it says that there will be a great shout and a trumpet sound and an angel and basically a big shebang when this happens. So there will be no secretly sneaking away into the sky. This will be a public event if it happens. This is not necessarily a core doctrine. Actually, it's not a core doctrine of the church. It is
00:27:19
Speaker
debated and has been debated extensively. So very little in Scripture talks about it and the Scriptures that do talk about it make it extremely clear that there will actually be an announcement when the Christians are taken.
00:27:35
Speaker
Now, what's interesting is in our Bible study, which we happen to be in a Messianic Bible study, we've talked about how the Messianic view is that it's not the Christians who are taken out of the world. It's actually the people who rejected God who are taken out of the world. So that's another interesting take on the concept of the rapture, which Jesus also talked about something similar when he talked about one will be taken and one will be left. And that's often referred to in regard to the rapture as well.
00:28:03
Speaker
So for a dispensational pre-millennial, we see Jesus come and die and ascend. And all of the time up until the rapture is considered pre-tribulation. So if you're a pre-trib rapture person, that's what you would believe, then there will be a great tribulation.
00:28:25
Speaker
a second coming of Christ, and then the millennial reign. And then there will be a final judgment. So it's pretty chopped up. And this is because all of the language that we see in Revelation, about a seven year tribulation, about the thousand year millennial reign, 666, all of those numbers that an a millennial would take symbolically,
00:28:50
Speaker
a dispensational premillennial takes literally. They say, well, it's the actual number 666. It's actually seven years, even though in Jewish literature, these numbers very often are used symbolically.
00:29:08
Speaker
So that's kind of your broad overview of these four views.
Invitation for Further Exploration
00:29:12
Speaker
I hope this gives you a little bit of a starting point. I am sure that you have a lot more questions and we will get into this in a future episode because I am answering Ask Anything Theology questions. If you have questions you want answered on the podcast, you can post them in the Every Woman A Theologian Facebook group, which you can find attached to my Facebook page, Felicia Masonheimer, or you can enter your questions on my Instagram.
00:29:36
Speaker
on Mondays when I put up my question box to answer a few of your questions and dive into what scripture says about them. I hope this was helpful and it made you think. You can find the show notes on the blog usually about a week after this episode goes live. And if you want some help studying Revelation, keep your ear to the ground because in our next shop,
00:30:00
Speaker
which is opening in June, we are hoping to launch a Revelation Bible study that will help you study this book for yourself and feel confident in what you believe. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Verity. You can connect with fellow listeners by following me on Instagram at Felicia Masonheimer or on our Facebook page by the same name. Also visit FeliciaMasonheimer.com for links to each episode and the show notes.