Hes not predicting the future because you cant predict what hasnt happened - it doesnt exist. Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine", "Bible Basics Study 5.5 - The Millennium", "Definitions and Observations Concerning the Second Coming of Christ", "Episode 132: D.A. May it be powerful in our lives we pray in Christs name. Theological Method of Premillennialism" in A Case for Historic Premillennialism: An Alternative to "Left Behind" Eschatology, ed. Now, the only thing that I ask is that you read it, and the only reason I ask you to read it is so that you may be what? Acts 2:17 And in the last days it shall . In the modern theological world, I say leave amillennialism to the process theologians. There have been premillennial (traditionally known as "chiliastic) movements, including some Reformed theologians, since the early church but most . Do you understand the massive apologetic power of the existence of Israel as an ethnic people in their own land? What he is saying is, a literal interpretation of the Old Testament is going to lead you to a premillennial view, and since we dont want to get there, we cant use a literal approach. He has been the pastor of Grace Community Church, a non-denominational church in Sun Valley, California since February 9, 1969. The church will have an increasing influence in the world. You forfeit everything, and God gives it to somebody else - namely, the church - and we hope the church can do better than Israel or the church will forfeit it all as well. Single. And for this reason the Scripture says: 'Thus the heaven and the earth were finished, and all their adornment. Postmillennialists hold to the view that the Second Coming will happen after the millennium. This up to now has been more like a lecture, but turn to Revelation chapter 1, and just look at verse 3 for a moment. Over four decades of ministry, John has written dozens of bestselling books, including The . Now, they make perfect amillennialists; thats a perfect setup for them. You get Israel right when you get the Old Testament covenants and promises with Israel right. The first era was the Old Testament history and was accordingly the age of the Father; the current age of the church was the age of the Son; and still in Joachim's future was the age of the Spirit. Premillennialism experienced a revival among 17th century Puritans like Thomas Brightman, Joseph Mede, and others. This belief claims that human history will continue for 6,000 years and then will enjoy Sabbath for 1,000 years (the millennial kingdom), thus all of human history will have a total of 7,000 years prior to the new creation. We chart the course and God reacts. Now, to affix our thinking to one great future event which seems to be the most controversial, I want you to think with me about the coming kingdom of Christ, known as the millennial kingdom, because in the twentieth chapter of Revelation, the opening of that chapter, there is reference to the reign and rule of Jesus Christ on the earth which lasts one thousand years; in fact, one thousand is repeated six times in that brief text. No kingdom on earth ruled by Christ before He gets here, and no kingdom on earth ruled by Christ after He gets here. It is often post-tribulational, meaning that the rapture of the church will occur after a period of tribulation. Whats that about? And I can only tell you I am unwaveringly committed to the sovereign election of a future generation of Jews to salvation, and the full inheritance of all the promises and covenants of God given to them in the Old Testament. Anything to avoid premillennialism, even if you change the rules of interpretation. Hes getting better. With appearances by. Now, I told you a few weeks ago why people believe that, because they want to get God off the hook so Hes not responsible for evil; but Hes happy to take the responsibility for allowing evil for His own glory. In fact, the worst evil thats ever been done on the history of the world was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and by that - the worst evil - He gained the greatest glory. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism,577 especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.578". Historically, church fathers favored historic premillennialism, including Ireneaus, Papias, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Hippolytus. John MacArthur's six-part series, "Why Every Calvinist is a Premillennialist," addresses this aspect of historic premillennialism, the future for Israel. He would be pretty close to progressive. Postmillennialists think things are going to get better. Theres a recovery of premillennialism in the modern era, and the recovery of premillennialism in the modern era came from two very unlikely sources. Some people want to turn it into ages - theres nothing in there that does that; theres nothing in the text itself that does that. Contrarily, certain Anabaptists, Huguenots, and Bohemian Brethren were premillennial. It is narrative history, and we fight - sometimes tooth and nail - to maintain the literal veracity of Genesis 1 through 3. "Why Every Self-Respecting Calvinist is a Pre-Millennialist." For those of you who don't know, this was a statement, among others, that John MacArthur was recorded as making at the recent Shepherd's Conference 2007 at Grace Community Church, Sun Valley California. However, what makes him really unique is that he was not Historic Premillennial - but Dispensational (Held to a pre . For the last century, the belief has been common in Evangelicalism according to surveys on this topic. Another Rapture passage - great one - verse 16: the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, the trumpet of God, the dead in Christ shall rise first. After that he must be loosed for a little while." Therefore, Israel has been permanently set aside, so that the only kingdom will be that kingdom that we call the church, ruled by Christ, either expanding to take over the world, or existing in the world, and finally in heaven. Theyve been refined, clarified, expanded, enriched through these 50 years, but I was convinced when I started. This is observed in the 41st of the Anglican Articles, drawn up by Thomas Cranmer (1553), describing the millennium as a 'fable of Jewish dotage', but it was omitted at a later time in the revision under Elizabeth (1563).[35]. Instead it consistently referred to the present age so that the church was currently experiencing the eschaton. Yet, Abraham did not receive it during all the time of his journey there. They will die for that truth regarding the church, but unashamedly abandon that same truth for the elect nation of Israel. In the meantime, Ive continued to study the Old Testament to write all the footnotes for the MacArthur Study Bible through the entire Old Testament. If you look at Acts 3:19, Peter says, Repent therefore, and return, that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing - thats the millennium - may come from the presence of the Lord; that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive till the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time. So, having your eschatology in place may lead you to repentance. We know that when He appears, - second coming we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is. Turn to 1 Corinthians 15; 1 Corinthians 15. DP also believes that God has a place for both national Israel (cf. Oxford theologian Alister McGrath has noted that "all medieval theology is Augustinian to a greater or lesser extent. The reason why it's called "historic premillennialism" is that, historically, this was the allegedly commonly-held view by many of the church fathers like Iraenus, Pappias, and Justin Martyr. [25] In accordance with this view, Augustine divided history into two separate dispensations, first the church age (the current age of 6,000 years), and then the millennial kingdom (Sermon 259.2). The alpha privative in the Greek language means a negative, so there is the view that there is no millennium; that what John is writing about in Revelation 20 is very vague, may refer to nothing other than a long time in which the church flourishes on earth, simply referring to that kingdom which is spiritual - that is, the rule of Christ over those who belong to Him while on earth. So that whatever God chose to do He will do, that whatever He began to do He will complete, those who will defend that to their last breath - Gods irrevocable, unconditional, unilateral, sovereign election will bring those He has chosen to the fulfillment of all that He has promised them. We understand that when you have a prophecy in the Bible that has not yet come to pass, not everything will be clear. Israel sinned, youre out. It has to matter to us. [2] Amillennialists do not view the thousand years mentioned in Revelation as a literal thousand years but see the number "thousand" as symbolic and numerological. That is called historical premillennialism: Christ will come, set up the kingdom, but it won't have the Jewish character that we anticipate from Old Testament promises it would have, because those promises were cancelled to Israel and given to the church. Revelation 1:3: Blessed is he who reads, and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it: for the time is near.. Its the whole point of everything else. That is to say, while they understood that someone would come, they understood whatever it was that had been revealed to them, the timing was not clear, and the precise personages were not clear. Not just the future of Israel, but our confidence in the Word of God. And then the effect of it is in verse 58: Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, and you can stop right there. Why do we want to change the rules in interpretation to avoid that? There is no doubt that he does hold to the fundamental distinction between the Church and Israel, though he does not always apply this distinction consistently. When Christianity became the official religion of Rome in the fourth . And so, we stand steadfast, immovable. Hughes, James A. Thats just two ways to look at the same thing. I have even called thee by thy name Isaiah 65:9: Mine elect shall inherit it - the promises of God. If you read the paper and have your eyes open, and youre breathing, and your body has any temperature at all, you know things arent getting better. "[43] His Puritan contemporaries, Increase Mather and Cotton Mather, openly proclaimed a belief in a literal millennium. Dispensational premillennialism (DP) offers the most complex chronology of the end times.It argues that the current church age will end with the rapture of the church (cf. That in itself is an indication of Gods preservation for their future. #6. Popular proponents of dispensational premillennialism have been John F. MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Ray Comfort, Jerry Falwell, Todd Friel, Dwight Pentecost, John Walvoord (d. 2002), Tim Lahaye, Charles Caldwell Ryrie (in the notes for the Ryrie Study Bible), the theological-folk poetry of Jack Royerton, and Charles L. Feinberg. Oh sure, it helps to know some history and some background, but this is a pronounced blessing. John MacArthur is the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, where he has served since 1969. MacArthur--who is an ardent dispensationalist--stated and defended his position. John Fullerton MacArthur Jr. (born June 19, 1939) is an American Protestant pastor and author known for his internationally syndicated Christian teaching radio and television program Grace to You. They dont want to accept the fact that Adam and Eve were created full grown, male and female, not the result of an evolutionary process. Now, were going to dig a little more deeply into the whole idea of the millennial kingdom and what the Bible says about it, and as to its nature and the aspects of the kingdom that are revealed in Scripture - and by the way, they are many and they are wondrous to behold, and we will do that. The catechism of the Catholic Church teaches in paragraph 676 that the millennium is to be understood as "beyond history". The preacher's admission came amid news that Grace Community Church in Sun Valley received an $800,000 settlement from Los Angeles County after defying pandemic-induced health orders. Premillennialism: This view sees a chronological sequence as Satan is bound in the future when Christ returns and before Christians receive their reward, and then the millennium commences, hence the name, "pre". I was talking to one of our missionaries just this same week I gave this talk to the pastors, and he was coming back from China and he said, Theres only one view in the church in China and its the premillennial view. Of course, because they just take what Scripture says. It is one thing to omit them in formal obedience to the law; and another thing to omit them in prudence, or for necessity, because we cannot keep them. . On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The first phase of that eternal rule will be His reign on this earth, which will last - as Revelation 20 says six times - a thousand years, after which His rule will continue, because it is an everlasting rule, but it will continue in a new heaven and a new earth that replace this heaven and earth, which will melt in an atomic implosion and make way for the new creation. So, if you say the promises of the Old Testament that refer to Israel really meant the church, you have no precedent for such an interpretation. I had, as theologians might call it, my own my own ordo eschaton; that would be the chronological sequence of the end times. Some of the most formidable amillennialists - and Im talking about well-respected, very erudite influential theologians - say things like this, and Ill quote. First, the Antichrist would appear and a seven-year period of tribulation would commence. The other looks at it as a spiritual kingdom also but says it will decline and decline and decline until Jesus finally comes. The reformers had it right on most issues. Regarding this Dr. Timothy Jones writes, "Dispensationalism emphasizes the differences and discontinuity between the physical descendants of Abraham and followers of Jesus [2]. Ive preached through many of the books of the Old Testament, the first eleven chapters of Genesis through Daniel, Zechariah, the minor prophets, and pieces and bits of Isaiah and others in the Old Testament. What is meant whe All rights reserved. [49] The Lutheran ChurchMissouri Synod explicitly states, When Christ returns, 'new heavens and a new earth' will be created (2 Pet. The end is as divinely designed as the beginning, and God has given us massive amounts of revelation in the Scripture about the future. - comfort one another. But that is essentially what theyre asking us to do. Art. He loved the people in the church. Not that they were the only ones to be saved, but they were the ones through whom God will eventually reach, and even set up His Son to rule over the nations. I remember when I flew to Kazakhstan in about a 35 or 38-hour flight; got off the plane at 7:00 in the morning to speak at a conference. Register. You have this hope as a purifying hope. MacArthur's Leaky Dispensationalism. Weve been working our way through doctrinal emphases in Scripture, doctrinal themes, and we have covered a lot of ground. The paragraph in full reads "676 The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. Coining the word was "almost entirely the work of British and American Protestants and was prompted by their belief that the French and American Revolutions (the French, especially) realized prophecies made in the books of Daniel and Revelation."[3]. But in the Old Testament - for example, Isaiah 45:4: Israel, Mine elect. Dr. James M. Boice Makes An Excellent Case For Premillennialism. So, I told the pastors at the conference, and the title of this talk is, Why every self-respecting Calvinist has to be a premillennialist. Because, if you believe in divine sovereign election, then you have to believe that as God will be faithful to His promises to His church, He will also be faithful to His promises to His elect nation Israel. Out of their own mouth - whats wrong with that? Whether youre an amillennialist or a postmillennialist, you basically say Israel forfeited all its promises. One says its not the kingdom. Barry Horner's emphasis in Future Israel also fits in here. Romans 11:28 . 2. They believe God elects nobody to salvation. From this point on he dedicated much of his energy to ridding the church of this belief. . And theres the main verb in the sentence are in varying degrees of disinterest in applying their skills to the end of the story, and rather, content to be in happy if not playful disagreement in regard to the vast biblical data on eschatology, as if the end doesnt matter much - period. Like all divine truth, getting the future truth right is beneficial. He is best known for his voluminous tome written against the 2nd century Gnostic threat, commonly called Against Heresies. And Im not in to newspaper exegesis, where you where everything that happens in the news fulfills some obscure Old Testament prophecy. Responding to Questions About Amillennialism. when they overthrew Jerusalem in the first of 3 steps (also 597 B.C., 586 B.C.). Grace to You radio, video, audio, print, and website resources reach millions worldwide each day. Arminians - not Armenians, thats different; those who follow Arminius - did not believe in election. The assembly and the circumstances of the assembly must be distinguished. Edwards taught that a type of Millennium would occur "1260 years after A.D. 606 when Rome was recognized as having universal authority. [41] Although they were not premillennial, the English theologian Daniel Whitby (16881726), the German Johann Albrecht Bengel (16871752), and the American Jonathan Edwards (170358) "fueled millennial ideas with new influence in the nineteenth century. When He comes, everything ends immediately. This will be followed by an additional return of Christ with his saints (though there are post tribulation dispensationalists, such as Robert Gundry). 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