Excerpted from pgs. 413-17. If not in Australia, check Amazon for copy in your own country
The Kingdom: Every Square Inch : McKinlay, Neil Cullan, Schwartz, D. Rudi: Amazon.com.au: Books
An optimistic eschatology
Neither the negativity of Two
Kingdom Theology nor Dispensationalism nor anything else will stop Christ’s
Kingdom from coming. Why? Because His Kingdom, (yes, yet another little
trinity!), has come (past tense), is coming (present tense), and will come
(future tense). Imperceptible to the naked eye, it progressively expands like
the tiny mustard seed that grows into a great tree, and in influence like the
yeast in the batch of dough. We cannot stop it because it is not we, but the
Spirit of Christ, that is building His Kingdom. Our hastening or our hindering
its coming is simply another way of saying that God blesses covenant obedience
and curses covenant disobedience. Therefore, it is important that we properly
understand the Great Commission as we pray the Lord’s Prayer lest we disobey
and disappoint the King.
It is presumed that the reader
has a basic understanding of the three main views of ‘end times’, viz.,
Premillennialism, Amillennialism, and Postmillennialism. There are books
aplenty discussing each member of this trinity. Now, when discussing each of
these views, it can be difficult for the reviewer to give an assessment
unbiased by his own particular perspective. That being said, in terms of
Scottish weather, in order of sequence (i.e.., Pre-, A-, Post-) one might
describe a) as overcast and raining, b) clouds with intermittent showers, and
c) clear skies and sunny. For the first two, one needs to take an umbrella. For
the last, sunscreen and sunglasses will do.
While referring to themselves
as Optimillennials, those of the Postmillennial view refer to those holding the
other two views as Pessimillennials. Should Christians be optimistic or
pessimistic about God’s Kingdom promise to Jesus (and to us in Christ)? “But
each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are
Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God
the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He
must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will
be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:23-26). So, we see that it is God who is
progressively subduing all of Christ's enemies (and ours). Just as Jesus defeated
death by being resurrected from the dead, so will all those that belong to Him
at the Last Day, a.k.a. Resurrection Day or Judgment Day.
Though there are trinities
within this trinity of views, e.g., Premillennialism’s Pre, Mid, and
Post-tribulation, all three views are agreed that Christ’s Kingdom is coming.
The Pre- and A- views believe that things will not get better on earth till
after Christ’s bodily return. The Premillennialist believes that things will
progressively get worse, the Amillennialist believes that things will pretty
much continue as they are. The former studies the news for signs of what it
believes are supposed to take place before Christ’s return, with a particular
fixation on today’s Israel and Jews in general. Some of the latter style
themselves as optimistic Amillennialists, which, to all intents and purposes
makes them Postmillennial, though they may not like to admit it.
Postmillennialism is viewed by the other two as being triumphalist. However, as
we have already noted, it is not we by our feeble human efforts, but God by His
Spirit who progressively brings in Christ’s Kingdom. As it was for Zerubbabel,
so it is for us, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor
by power, but by My Spirit’” (Zech. 4:6).
Albert Wolters puts paid to an
old canard, the false notion that having an optimist eschatology means anything
other than a forward march fraught with falling into, but then draining and
filling in swamps, ditches, and potholes. It is no smooth triumphalism. Says
Wolters,
[T]he
coming of Christ introduced an overlap of the ages in which the powers of evil
continue to co-exist with the healing and renewing power of the age to come
(Matt. 13:24-30, 36-43). A battle between these two “powers” characterizes this
time period. In fact we live in a time when the antithesis between the two
kingdoms has been heightened.
The
history of this “time between the times,” then, will not be one of smooth
progress or an incremental linear development of the kingdom towards its
consummation. Neither will our mission be one that resembles a steady
victorious march toward the end. Rather this redemptive era is one of fierce
conflict with many casualties. Our mission will be one that is costly and will
involve suffering. Paul states that “everyone who wants to live a godly life in
Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12, NIV; cf. Acts 14:22). How close
our understanding of mission is to the New Testament’s may perhaps be in part
judged by the place which we accord to suffering in our understanding of the
calling of the church.
Now, Two Kingdom Theology
belongs in the Amillennial camp, and, like Premillennialism, it does not hold
to the progressive Christianisation of nations (and all the sovereign spheres
therein) as Christ’s Kingdom continues to grow larger and spread in influence
till Christ comes again, i.e., till His Kingdom comes. And so, if the
Postmillennial view is triumphalist, then surely the Premillennial and
Amillennial views are defeatist.
Like the man who “drew a
bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints
of the harness”,
so Premills and Amills think they have found the chink in the Postmill’s
armour. It is found among those verses of Revelation from whence those endless
disputes about Millennialism come. One is where it speaks of Satan being bound
for a thousand years (a millennium). “And cast him into the
bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should
deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and
after that he must be loosed a little season” (Rev. 20:3 KJV). It is upon
that little word “till” (ἄχρι)
in the verse just quoted that the doctrine of “final apostasy” or “Satan’s
little season” has been built. How can the Postmill position of the progressively
increasing Kingdom – even to such a point where the nations will have beat their
war weapons into gardening and agricultural implements and study war no more – be
true if, in the end, Satan is going to be released to deceive the nations?
According to the Postmill view, aren’t all the nations supposed to be Christian
nations by then? Nigel Lee responds,
The KJV
misunderstands the meaning of the word achri [ἄχρι]
and renders Rev. 20:2-3:
“The
Devil…should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should
be fulfilled” etc., missuggesting that after the ‘Millennium’ the Devil
will again deceive the Nations afresh. This is not so. For, after the visible
return of Christ for His saved Nations at the end of the
‘Millennium’ – all the then-unchained Devil will be enabled to do – is keep on
deceiving the resurrected dead nations he had
previously been deceiving until the start of the ‘Millennium’ some thousand
years earlier. Accordingly, we have better rendered Rev. 20:2-3; “The
Devil…should deceive the Nations not even when the thousand years were
completed” etc.
In an article titled Reconstructing
Postmillennialism, Martin Selbrede referred to Postmills who struggled with
texts of the supposed ‘final apostasy’ as ‘pessimistic Postmillennialists’. Says
Selbrede,
Modern
postmils took Boettner’s 1958 ideas and ran with them, while Boettner’s
continued scriptural examination of the issue led him to revise his book in
1984, readopting Warfield’s view and rejecting the final apostasy. Somebody
surely missed the boat. But who? Today’s optimillennialists? Or Dr. Boettner?
In Nigel Lee’s John’s
Revelation Unveiled, (from which we have just quoted above), we find a Commendation
by Professor Dr. Loraine Boettner, (which he wrote to Dr Lee in 1978), in
which we read,
…I
think that you have given a good explanation of that very difficult passage,
Rev. 20:7-10. That is a section of Scripture that has been puzzling to me, as
on the surface it seems to indicate a future final apostasy of the Church; and
yet that seemed so contrary to what I believed would actually take place – no
apostasy but rather a smooth transfer or merger into the heavenly kingdom…
Dr.
Warfield did not believe that there would be a final apostasy. You have given a
good explanation – that there is no actual apostasy, no real danger ever faces
the saints, and that the Devil and his followers, are merely exposed before the
righteous shortly before their final expulsion into hell. Thank you for it.
Directly after quoting Dr
Warfield, says Dr Boettner in his revised 1984 version of The Millennium,
We
agree that Revelation 20:1-10 affords no real basis for believing that there is
to be a final apostasy in the sense that a large proportion of earth’s
inhabitants turn against God, or that the safety of the saints is seriously
threatened.
Nigel
Lee again,
There
is no question of Satan deceiving the Christian
majority of all the World’s many inhabitants – in that day! Nor is
there then any apostasy from the World-dominating latter-day Church.
Thus: Hippolytus, Jonathan Edwards, John Gill, Moses Stuart, Warfield,
Stonehouse, Kik, Boettner, Vonk, Rissi, and Rushdoony. Nor is there even a
short period of successful renewed Satanic activity to deceive even a portion
of any Nation then extant. No! At that time, powerless Satan will need to
be enabled, however feebly, to crawl out of his prison. Only Almighty
God can and will unlock the door – and then turf out the Devil,
unto his Final Judgment.
Still,
the Devil will then indeed make a feeble and desperate attempt “to deceive” his
previous dupes once more. Yet in doing this, he thus deceives not God’s
elect – but only Satan’s own servants.
And so whatever the real or
imagined chink in the Postmill’s armour was, it has now been expertly repaired
and our optimistic eschatology is fully intact.
Christ has already defeated
death, and even though we are still in the ‘not yet’ aspect, we have confidence
because of His resurrection as firstfruits. And because Christ has already ascended
to receive His Kingdom, though we are still in the ‘not yet’, it is as good as
having arrived! And though we have only received tokens of the ‘not yet’ (such
as the Holy Spirit, regeneration, salvation, new hearts, new natures, new
records et al), we are as good as having been resurrected as we await the redemption
of our bodies.
So, after that brief but
necessary digression in which we have stated, using the broadest of terms, some
of the stumbling blocks and aversions some Christians have towards cultural
engagement. It has to do with your view in eschatology, your view of last
things from the perspective of your own day. Premillennialism says, why bother
engaging culture when Christ is coming back at any moment? And Two Kingdom
Theology Amillennialism says, engaging culture it is not the Church’s remit.
But here’s what Henry Van Til says,
Through
sin man fell away from God and his religion became apostate, but through Christ
man is restored to true religion. It is therefore more correct to ask what the
role of culture is in religion than to put the question the other way around …
Man, in the deepest reaches of his being, is religious; he is determined by his
relationship to God ... Hutchison … says, “For religion is not one aspect or
department of life besides the others, as modern secular thought likes to
believe; it consists rather in the orientation of all human life to the
absolute.” Tillich has captured the idea in a trenchant line, “Religion is the
substance of culture and culture is the form of religion.”
Martin G.
Selbrede, 160 Journal of Christian Reconstruction / vol. 15.01, in an
article titled Reconstructing Postmillennialism, 159-60.
