Slides: Different Millennial Views

Different Millennial Views
by David Feddes

Many evangelicals believe:

• Secret rapture: Jesus comes near earth, resurrects dead believers, and takes living Christians, who vanish from earth.
• Tribulation: 7 years ruled by Antichrist; many Jews are saved and preach to others.
• Glorious appearing: Jesus comes and banishes Antichrist and unbelievers to hell.
• Millennium: Jesus reigns on earth for 1,000 years. Temple worship and animal sacrifices are reinstated.
• End of millennium: Satan leads nations worldwide to rebel against Jesus. Jesus crushes rebels and sends Satan to hell.
• White throne judgment: Unbelievers are resurrected, judged, and sent to hell.
• Eternity: The Lord creates a new heaven and a new earth, where all his people and his angels will live with him forever.

Dispensational premillennialism

• God deals with Israel and the church in sharply distinct ways (dispensations).
• OT prophecies were for Israel, not for the church. Church age is a parenthesis.
• NT teachings about God’s kingdom are not for the church but were about Jesus’ reign as Israel’s king—postponed because of Israel’s unbelief but to be fulfilled in the millennium.
• Jesus must return in glory before (pre-) reigning a thousand years (millennium).

Has dispensationalism been held by most Christians throughout history?

No, its widespread acceptance among evangelicals is largely the result of recent mass-marketing.

• J. N. Darby and D. L. Moody (1800s)
• C. I. Scofield’s study Bible notes (1909)
• The Late Great Planet Earth (1970)
• Left Behind novels (1995 and beyond)

Other views have been more prominent among Christians in other times & places.

Historic premillennialism

• Some early Christians (Irenaeus, Justin Martyr) held a premillennial view.
• No early Christians taught a secret rapture. Christ “will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God” before  Christians are “caught up to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thess 4:16-17).
• No church father was dispensationalist: all taught the unity of Jewish and Gentile Christians, and all believed that OT promises are fulfilled in the church.

Room for various views

• My congregation and denomination do not require a particular millennial view.
• The Apostles Creed insists that Jesus “will come again to judge the living and the dead.” We believe in “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” All Christians must affirm these basics, but there is room to differ on how to interpret  and apply details of biblical prophecy.
• Keep seeking better understanding (not Fascinated Fred or Practical Pam)

Amillennial: the millennium is now

• We are living in the millennium period when Satan is bound, cast down, and restrained.
• We are living in the millennium period when Christ’s reign on earth is already underway.
• “The first resurrection” has already happened for millions of souls in heaven. Their spirits are alive in Jesus’ presence, and they are now reigning with Christ on heavenly thrones.
• At the end of the present millennium, Satan is unleashed briefly, and Antichrist takes power.

The Second Coming:  Judgment Day

• Jesus comes loudly and visibly with his angels.
• Dead believers are resurrected, living believers transformed, and together they are caught up to meet their King as He comes down to earth.
• Antichrist and unbelievers are slain.
• All unbelieving dead are resurrected.
• All are judged according to God’s records and whether they are in the book of life.
• Satan and all God’s enemies go to hell.
• Christ presents his church to the Father, heaven comes to earth, and believers enjoy God forever.