Each Week on Saturday, I’ll be asking a “Question of the Week.” I’d love your input and discussion! Ask a good question in the comments and it may show up as the next week’s question! I may answer the questions in the comments myself.
What’s Your View of “The Millennium”
There are few in-house debates which are as divided among Christians as issues related to eschatology. I’m curious as to what views my readers take on various eschatological themes, so I figured I’d ask! Before we ask the question, here’s a brief outline of different views about “The Millennium”:
[P]remillennialism… claims that the return of Christ precedes the millennium [as an actual 1000 year reign of Christ on Earth], postmillennialism… holds that Christ returns after the millennium… amillenialism.. holds that the millennium is not limited to a thousand years but includes the entire period of time between the first and second comings of Christ (Riddlebarger, 19, cited below)
There are seemingly endless permutations of how these different views may be hashed out, but I’m curious:
What is your view of the Millennium? Will it be a literal 1000 years, or is it some finite, but undetermined period of time? Will Christ come before or after it?
Eschatology– the study of the end times- is not something I’ve focused on much at this blog (though you may read what I have written by clicking on the word) for a few reasons. The most prominent is that I haven’t studied it much. This makes me curious: which view do you hold and why? Let me know in the comments.
Links
Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more.
Question of the Week– Check out other questions and give me some answers
Book Review: “Four Views on the Book of Revelation” (Zondervan Counterpoints Series)– I review a book which focuses upon Revelation–the book of the Bible which is most commonly associated with eschatology. Check it out for a survey of four views on how to read the book alongside various eschatological views.
Source
Kim Riddlebarger, A Case for Amillenialism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003).
– I chose this specific book because it featured a concise outline of the three most prominent views on the millennium.
SDG.
J.W. Wartick - Reconstructing Faith 
Just a small realization I’ve had: the most knowledgeable eschatological scholars that I’ve personally heard are probably 80% a-mill. It’s not a subject I’m particularly taken with so I have nothing special to add other than that! I do find it interesting, though, that it seems like one by one, the theological takes churches had when I was growing up have tended to either turn out to be improbable or at least seriously disputed. When I was a kid I thought all this stuff was so cut and dry.
Posted by Tim Henderson | August 17, 2014, 11:15 PMI tend towards postribulational premillenialism, I can understand why some would adopt the amillenial position, I find the pretribulational premillenial position only understandable given a poor hermeneutic framework, and have no time whatsoever for the postmillenial position. I find that Revelation 20:2-3 is difficult to interpret within amillenialism; I know that the genre apocalyptic utilises symbolism heavily, but I just don’t find any interpretations of “that he might not deceive the nations any longer” able to successfully reconcile it with applying to the current age. I don’t believe that the 1000 years will necessarily be a literal millenium (although there is no reason why it can’t be); the symbolism of Revelation means that it could be simply refering to some unknown long period of time.
Pretribulational premillenialism involves interpreting certain passsages in a very literal way that isn’t always justified by context (this coming from a YEC and a complementarian, so I’m not intrinsically opposed to literal reading of the Bible when context and genre call for it); 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 is one classic example, where the Greek alludes to quite a different picture than the one obtained by reading the English literally. As for postmillenialism, I just don’t see any Biblical evidence that really makes a strong case for it. By process of elimination, I’m left with postribulational premillenialism; it’s not a doctrine I grasp tightly to, but it’s the one that I find best explains all the relevant Biblical texts taken together along with cultural context and historical evidence.
Posted by tsaebxiii | August 18, 2014, 2:07 AMA fascinating debate on this topic:
http://www.desiringgod.org/conference-messages/an-evening-of-eschatology
Posted by calebt45 | August 19, 2014, 7:48 AMI’m amill, but I don’t have the time to explain it right now.
Posted by Andy Wrasman | August 21, 2014, 12:20 AM