📖 Revelation Intensive — Unit 12: The Millennial Views — Postmillennialism

Text: Revelation 20:1-6

What Postmillennialism Holds

The three main views of the millennium of Revelation 20 take their names from where they place the return of Christ in relation to the thousand years. This unit presents the first of them, and the next two units present the others; the course holds them up side by side and favors none. The word "postmillennialism" means "after the millennium," for in this view Christ returns after the millennial age. Postmillennialism teaches that the thousand years describe a coming, or an already-begun and growing, golden age in which the gospel triumphs throughout the world before Christ returns. Through the ordinary preaching of the gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit, the nations will be so widely converted, and Christian influence will so pervade the world, that a long era of peace, righteousness, and the knowledge of God will prevail. Christ reigns now from heaven through His Word and Spirit, and that reign will grow until the world is largely Christianized. Only after this golden age does Christ return in person. Postmillennialism is therefore marked by hope and confidence about the real success of the gospel within this present age of history. It expects the church not merely to survive in a hostile world but at last to win it, as the leaven works through the whole lump.

The Order of Events

In postmillennialism the sequence runs like this. First comes the present gospel age, in which the kingdom of Christ grows like a seed. This grows into the millennium itself, a long golden age of gospel triumph and worldwide Christian influence, during which Christ reigns spiritually over a Christianized world and Satan's power to deceive the nations is held back. Near the very end, many postmillennialists allow for a brief final apostasy or rebellion, the loosing of Satan for a little while. Then comes the bodily return of Christ, followed by the general resurrection of the righteous and the wicked together, the final judgment at the great white throne, and the new heaven and new earth. The single distinctive that gives the view its name is the placing of Christ's return after the millennium, and the conviction that the golden age is brought about through the ordinary means of grace rather than by Christ's visible presence reigning on the earth. The millennium, in this view, is the gospel age coming to its full flower before the King appears. The whole course of history, in this picture, bends toward the victory of Christ before His coming, and not toward ruin.

The Biblical Case for Postmillennialism

Postmillennialists build their case from passages that promise the gospel real and growing success. They point to the Great Commission, in which the risen Christ claims all authority in heaven and on earth and sends the church to disciple all the nations, promising His presence to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20). They cite the parables of the kingdom's irresistible growth, the mustard seed that becomes a great tree and the leaven that works through the whole lump (Matthew 13:31-33). They appeal to the royal psalms that give the Messiah the nations as His inheritance and dominion to the ends of the earth (Psalm 2:8; 22:27-28; 72:8-11; 110:1). They turn to the prophets, who foresaw the mountain of the LORD's house exalted and the nations streaming to it, and the earth full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 2:2-4; 11:9), and to Daniel's stone that becomes a mountain and fills the whole earth (Daniel 2:35, 44). And they cite Paul's word that Christ must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet (1 Corinthians 15:25). Taken together, postmillennialists argue, Scripture promises not merely a remnant rescued from a failing world, but the gospel triumphing in history before the end. These are not isolated proof-texts, they argue, but a single thread running from the Psalms and the Prophets through the words of Christ and of Paul.

How Postmillennialism Reads Revelation 20

Reading Revelation with sensitivity to its symbols, postmillennialists understand the thousand years as a long, indefinite period, rather than a literal span of exactly one thousand calendar years, in which the gospel triumphs and Christ reigns spiritually over a Christianized world. The binding of Satan they take as the restraining of his power to deceive the nations as the gospel advances; the strong man is bound so that the peoples can no longer be held in the darkness that gripped them before the gospel went out. The first resurrection they understand spiritually, as the reign of the souls of the faithful with Christ and the triumph of their cause, rather than as a bodily rising from the grave. On this reading, Revelation 20 pictures the present age moving toward its full flowering, after which Satan is loosed for a little while, and then come the return of Christ and the final judgment described in the closing verses of the chapter. The millennium and the church age are, for postmillennialism, the same growing reality. The thousand years are not a separate era that begins only after Christ comes, but the maturing of the very age in which the church now lives.

Proponents and History

Postmillennialism flourished especially among the Puritans and through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Jonathan Edwards looked for a coming age of revival and gospel advance; the Princeton theologians Charles Hodge and Benjamin Warfield held the view, as did many leaders of the great missionary movement of that era. The view was especially popular in the nineteenth century, an age confident that the world was moving onward and upward, and that society would keep improving until at last the millennium arrived. Two developments changed that climate in the twentieth century. The first was the spread of the Scofield Reference Bible, published in 1909, which carried dispensational premillennialism into countless homes and pulpits. The second was the First World War, whose horror shattered the easy confidence that the world was steadily improving. In the wake of these, premillennialism in some form became dominant across much of twentieth-century evangelicalism. Postmillennialism did not disappear, however, and it has seen a modern revival among some Reformed writers who again look for the long-term triumph of the gospel in history. Its history shows that the view was once the common hope of much of the church, and not a recent novelty.

Objections Raised by Others

Those who hold other views raise several objections to postmillennialism, and fairness requires that they be heard. First, the New Testament seems to warn that evil and apostasy will increase, not decrease, before the end: it speaks of perilous times in the last days, of deceivers growing worse and worse, of a great falling away and the man of sin, and of days so shortened that, unless they were cut short, no flesh would be saved (2 Timothy 3:1-5, 13; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12; Matthew 24:9-13, 21-22). Second, critics say the optimistic form of the view was deeply shaken by the World Wars and the other horrors of the twentieth century, which seemed to contradict the expectation of a steadily improving world. Third, they observe that the world does not appear to be progressively Christianizing. Fourth, they question whether the figurative reading of the thousand years and the first resurrection is justified, and whether Scripture really promises a golden age before Christ's return rather than after it. Postmillennialists reply that temporary setbacks do not disprove the long-term triumph of the gospel, and that the promised golden age may still lie in the future. The debate, in the end, turns on whether Scripture teaches a triumphant church before the end or a faithful remnant kept through tribulation.

Summary and an Even-Handed Word

The great strength of postmillennialism is its high view of the power of the gospel and the present, active reign of Christ, and its hope that the Great Commission will truly succeed in the world. Its central claim is that the millennium is a golden age of gospel triumph that comes before the return of Christ, brought about through the preaching of the gospel and the work of the Spirit. Sincere, godly, orthodox Christians have held this view, among them some of the church's finest theologians, and the course presents it at full strength without endorsing it. The units that follow present premillennialism and amillennialism with the very same fairness, so that students may weigh the views for themselves before their teachers and their God. What all three views share, and what matters most of all, is the certain hope that the Lord Jesus Christ will return in glory, raise the dead, judge the world in righteousness, and make all things new. On that great hope the whole church stands together.

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