Postmillennialism

RV236-01

This chapter is one of the most dramatic chapters of all the Bible, and it is one of the most important. Understanding of this will give you perspective on the rest of the Bible. Misunderstanding this will lead you far astray.

The Second Coming of Christ

The Antichrist and the False Prophet

An Angel with the Key to the Abyss

Satan is Bound for 1,000 Years

This is a very important principle, as we shall see. Once you start spiritualizing, or symbolizing, the words of Scripture, you will go far astray from the meaning of the Word of God. So, right off the bat, it is important to understand that 1,000 years is literal. And the reason I stress that to you is that that is a minority viewpoint. If we, as a church, are going to say we hold a minority viewpoint on a theological principle, we better have a pretty good reason for it. We look out there, and here are all the vast Reformation churches that came down, and most of them say from the pulpit, "How terrible it is to tell people that that's 1,000 literal years. It's no such thing."

It's like when I was a student at Baylor University in the Bible department, and the head of the department expressed to us in class the concept that this could not be 1,000 literal years, but it was a symbol for a long period of time. So, as we will be seeing here, in chapter 20, several times this word "1,000 years" comes up. You must decide whether the Bible gives you any indication that this is a non-literal period or a literal 1,000 years. I remind you again that nowhere else in the Bible is the word "1,000" ever used in a symbolic sense.

The Millennium

The concept of 1,000 years is expressed by the term that we commonly use: "millennium." We get that word just, for your information, from two Greek words. One of the words means "1,000;" and, the other one "a year." ... This is a technical term for this period of Christ's reign on the earth after His Second Coming as head of a world government.

As we will show you in time, this kingdom has been promised throughout all the Old Testament Scriptures – that there would be a time when the Messiah Savior would reign over this whole earth as the supreme ruler as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. What they didn't tell us was specifically how long that period would be here. Here, in Revelation 20, that information is now given to us, and the millennium identifies that 1,000-year period.

The Abyss

Satan

Satan is Sealed in Prison

Satan had his angels seal the tomb of Jesus in order to keep Christ in the grave. But the Word of God makes clear to us that it didn't work. Christ arose, and He walked out of that tomb. In Acts 2:31-32, Peter said, "He looked ahead, and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ; that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay. This Jesus, God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses."

Satan will not be able to walk out of his jail cell, and out of his entombment. Satan is a finite creature of God, and he is not deity. Therefore, he can be made a prisoner of God. If Satan is to be deactivated, we logically conclude that his demons are deactivated with him. So, we're talking about a world, the very one in which we now live, in which suddenly there is a time when Satan is no longer free to roam and to do his work. He's no longer free to supervise and to administer a multitude of demonic angels to carry out his mission and his purposes.

The book of Acts tells us explicitly why God incarcerates him in this way. He puts a seal on him: "So that he should not deceive the nations any longer." Today, Satan is deceiving the nations. Today, Satan is not bound. He is free to influence the thinking and the ways of world leaders, and he does. Nations today are actually fully controlled by Satan as the god of this world. The only thing that undermines that is in a nation that has a maximum number of Bible doctrine-oriented Christians. This is a nation as ours once was, with a vast number of believers, who were trained in the Word of God. That counters the efforts of Satan. What happens is that there permeates up into the higher echelons of government, these leaders who have the mind of God. And when they make decisions, they make it on the basis that is compatible with the principles of the Word of God. Consequently, the nation and the society is blessed.

2 Corinthians 4:4 says, "In whose case, the god of this world (Satan) has blinded the minds of the unbelieving," and so on. He is clearly the god of this world who runs things. For this reason, Satan could (legitimately – this is one of times he didn't lie, when he could) offer to Jesus the kingdoms of all the earth; that He could become ruler of them without having to go through the cross. In Luke 4:5-8, you have that temptation incident, and the offer to give Him the kingdoms, which Christ rejected.

Government vs. the Individual

All the world today is making a choice: the government, in supreme position, as the authority and the source of all blessing, meeting the needs of the people; or, an individual in personal freedom, operating on biblical principles, providing for himself, and rising to the highest quality of a human being who has independence to stand tall as a human being made in the image of God. Government provision degrades the image of God. Personal provision exalts the image of God in us. The reason nations are violating the role of nations, which is to keep law and order in a society, is because Satan has convinced them that government provision is better than freedom; government security taken in place of personal responsibility.

The millennium will be the only time in human history when Satan will not be deceiving the leaders of the nations and their policies. Therefore, for the time of our lives, you must always be on your guard in political matters to know that Satan is behind the scenes manipulating the levers of power. Unless that political leader is a godly person, oriented to the Word of God, who will then function on those principles, you can be sure that Satan is on top of things.

He is going to be placed in this prison, we're told, for a period of time. He should not deceive the nations any longer until the 1,000 years were completed. Here again, we have the indication of the length of this earthly kingdom, until the 1,000 years should be completed. During the Millennium Kingdom of Christ on this earth, the world will be totally free of Satan and his demons. This today is the primary source of all deceptive thinking. This is the primary source of moral corruption today. If you take the devil out of the picture, along with his demons, what do you have left? You have the sin nature within you instigating you to do evil. And if you take evil out of the government by having a beneficent dictator like Jesus Christ as the world ruler who conducts world governments on the principles of the Word of God, then the world system will be restrained from its influence of evil. You're not going to see those dirty movies. You're not going to see those vile things on television. You're not going to see all the things and hear all the things that corrupt a human being and degrade us.

Suddenly, the world system is going to be greatly diminished in its influence. So, that's going to be a marvelous time to be living, when the only powerful source of evil is what arises from the nature of sin within us. Jesus said, however, that this condition is a restraint upon mankind, but it is not going to be welcomed by everyone.

The father of lies (John 8:44 calls the devil), and the deceiver of the whole world (Revelation 12:9 calls him), will be neutralized in all of his deceptive schemes (Ephesians 6:11 calls them) during the 1,000 years. Satan will not be defeated however by human power, and certainly he will not be defeated by social programs. You have crime in your society. Can the government come up with a program to solve it? Never. This is a spiritual problem, and Satan cannot be stopped in what he is promoting of evil in this world. There will be no conquest of this world by the gospel. And it's important that you observe what I just said. There will be no conquest of this world by the gospel. That is the rising opinion in a viewpoint called postmillennialism, which we will look at in due course.

When I was a student at Baylor University, that was, of course, right after World War II. And one day, in the Bible class, the head of the department was teaching us, and he was telling us that the time had come now when there would be a great permeating of the gospel throughout all society, and that there had come a conquest of a great evil that had existed in the world in fascism and Germany and Italy and Japan, and that now there would be a permeating of the gospel, and that the gospel would gradually there an impact upon all the world.

I had just returned from China as part of my tour of military duty, and I could have told him that whatever happened during that war, it did not change their devotion to Buddha. And I could have told him that while our enemy, Japan, lay in a rubble of defeat, it had not changed their Shintoism as their religious system and devotion. Nothing had changed, and has not changed to this day. The gospel is not going to take over this world and make everything better.

In fact, let me tell you what God says is going to be the direction of mankind. 2 Timothy 3:1-7 describe this whole period of time from New Testament time up to our day; but today, in the intensified stage: "Realize this. That in the last days, difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self." Isn't it interesting that God the Holy Spirit puts up front of the list of evils that are going to characterize the end times, your self-esteem (your self-love)? And this is the thing that is being emphasized even in Christian circles: What we need is more self-love; more self-esteem; and, more self-orientation. You have this long list of "self-" words that are the concentration of the world today. Because people will be lovers of themselves, here's what's going to happen.

"There will be lovers of money; they'll be boastful; arrogant; revilers; disobedient to parents; ungrateful; unholy; unloving; irreconcilable; malicious gossips; without self-control; brutal; haters of good; treacherous; reckless; conceited; and, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power. Avoid such men as these."

So, here's the picture. It is dramatically different from what we are being told by some religious teachers – that the gospel is going to make an impact. No, the Word of God tells us that the end of our age is in a catastrophic destruction, as humanity rises (or I should say "descends") to its worst level ever.

Furthermore, in Luke 18:8, Jesus made a very interesting observation. Jesus said, "I tell you that he will bring about justice for them speedily (speaking here in terms of this judge in this parable). However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?" When the Son of Man comes, will He find belief in the principles of God on this earth? The Greek sentence always gives you the answer by the way it phrases it. And the answer is, "No."

So, when Christ returns, the one thing that's not going to be here is a widespread belief in the Word of God. Need I remind you that that's the direction that we are taking now? This is a picture of societal degeneration. When Christ comes, the reason for it will be clear. There will be no confidence in the Bible.

Revelation 20:3 goes on to say that Satan is given a reprieve: "After these things, he must be released for a short time." After the Millennial Kingdom's 1,000-year period, he must be released for a short time. The word "released" here tells us something from the Greek Bible. It's the Greek word "luo." It is in the aorist tense, which means at a point of time – that point of time being near the end of the millennium. It is passive, meaning that God releases it. He doesn't break out of his cell. He doesn't pull off a jailbreak. It's in the infinitive mood, which tells us that this is God's purpose now being carried out to turn the devil loose upon the world once more.

So, at the close of the millennium, Satan is released from the prison in the abyss. For a short time, he has a period of being free. During this period, it gives him time once more (freedom) to deceive and to appeal to mankind to follow him against Jesus Christ. And what Satan is able to do, we will learn, is to rally a number of unbelievers who were born during the millennium to join him in a final rebellion against God's authority.

Let's move ahead in Revelation 20:7-8: "And when the 1,000 years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, and will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to get them together for war. The number of them is like the sands of the seashore." That's an enormous number of people. They will be greatly reduced death in the millennium. There will be a greatly expanded life span. Consequently, the population of the world will multiply enormously. Of course, we know now that the world can sustain multiplied numbers of the 6 billion that are here now without any problems at all. It's only the environmental extremists who try to tell you that we have too many people on the earth.

Well, it's going to be like the sands of the seashore. The children are born. If you can imagine, they look at Christ. There he is in Jerusalem. They see Him on TV. He speaks to the nations. He's governing. We, the church are His agents in that government. We are in a worldwide enterprise. And it's a golden age for mankind. The children study in the history books how terrible it used to be. One of the things people used to do is have schools where you could learn how to go to war. You had war colleges, you had war academies. You had all kinds of sophisticated weapons. And children will read about that in their history books, and realize that there aren't any more war schools, and there aren't any more weapons. This is a world where there's not a single war. There is not a single conflict anywhere.

Yet, down within their hearts, they rebel against the king because they have one thing left: the old sin nature cranking out the desire to do evil. The devil is not there tempting them. The demons are not there tempting them. The world system is not there tempting them. But the sin nature is, as it is with all of us (the best of us as Christians). The result is that these children are sitting there just indignant within them, and just grimly holding on, resisting without open rebellion. If you openly rebel, you'll be brought to justice. So, you have this vast number who are ready to rally to Satan, and they do.

Well, this final world conflict will come off as always with Satan defeated. Jesus Christ wins the final confrontation. Then all of unsaved humanity, including the dead unsaved who are raised, and they all stand before the great white throne judgment. The final disposition is made of these who, through the ages, have resisted the Savior, and then they will all be ushered into the lake of fire for all eternity.

The millennial world is a world that the Bible has a lot to say about. It is important, furthermore, that you understand this world because, again, you are a minority congregation. The vast number of churches say that there is no millennial world coming, and that there is no Christ ruling upon this earth.

Of course, when I was in Baylor University, a Southern Baptist School with an amillennial frame of reference, that's exactly what we were taught – that there is no millennium, and there is no ruling of Jesus Christ upon this earth.

The Baptism of Fire

Believers in the millennium will be of two types. Those who have physically survived the tribulation will enter the kingdom in their mortal bodies. Those who have died during the tribulation will be resurrected. They will have glorified bodies, but they also will be citizens of the kingdom. Daniel revealed this in his book in Daniel 12:13: "But as for you, go your way to the end. Then you will enter into rest, and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age." Here, the Jews of the Old Testament are told, "You will go to your death. You will go to your peace. You will be raised again. An at the end time, you will receive your allotted portion, which is to go into this millennial kingdom.

So, in this kingdom, there will be believers from the dispensation of the Jews who died – people like Daniel, Abraham, David, and Moses. They will be raised. They'll have glorified bodies. Also, there will be believers from the dispensation of the gentiles who died – people like Adam and Eve, and they will be raised in their glorious bodies. We Christians will be there. We will not have our ordinary mortal bodies. We will have glorified bodies like Christ, but we will not be citizens of the kingdom. We will be the rulers (the authorities) who govern with Christ.

So, some citizens of the kingdom are there in mortal bodies, and some are there in resurrected immortal bodies. It's going to be an interesting combination of human beings on the face of the earth. There will be no old sin nature in the resurrected citizens, and there will be no physical weaknesses. However, those who have mortal bodies will have the old sin nature. There will be less temptation without Satan and the world system. These people will reproduce children, and they will give them the old sin nature through the fathers.

The millennial born children are born spiritually dead, and they need salvation. Some will accept Christ the king. Some will not. They decide for or against the physical Jesus Christ as Savior, as people have had to do it all dispensations, and there will be a grace means provided them for cleansing them from known sins so that there may be temporal fellowship.

The population boom will increase the number of children, and they will need to go positive toward the King Jesus. The population will expand because they'll be great control of sickness. There'll be no wars. Privation will be removed. People will have what they need to live. There will be an extended lifespan because of the nutritious food that they will, so that the immune system is working. There'll be no abortions to murder the unborn children. So, in a variety of ways, will be a great increase in population. Economic conditions will be so right that everybody will have his own private property, and he will have ample food to eat. Again, because it will be food restored with all of its nutrition, the immune system will have what it needs to keep the body from getting sick.

There will be no generation gap because children will respect the lines of authority from their elders, and those who are unsaved will be forced to respect the lines of authority from their elders. The personal presence of the Lord Jesus Christ will cause great happiness all over the world, and the divine institution of government will be put to the right use by Christ the King.

In such a perfect governmental establishment, it would seem that everybody would rise to support Christ, but that is not so. Here's where we see how really corrupt a person is by nature. Here's where we must remind ourselves that we who are believers, no matter how mature we are, or how far we've gone in building the spiritual maturity structure in our souls, have that corruption still there: to lead us away from God; to lead us away from real truth; to lead us away from a stable life; and, to lead us off into some emotional domination or some destruction and disorientation of Satan's thinking.

Satan's Release after the 1,000 Years

These rebels, please remember, are fully informed about doctrine because the knowledge of the Lord is universal. The Bible makes it clear that even if you are an unbeliever, you will know the Word of God. You will be bombarded with it in the schools. You'll be bombarded with it on public television. You'll be hit with it in public entertainment and publications. In a variety of ways, the principles of the Word of God will be made clear.

Adam, of course, knew the Word of God, and he knew what he was doing when he rejected God. 1 Timothy 2:14 tells us that he wasn't deceived like his wife. Adam deliberately said, "I want to spend my life with Eve. If I don't sin, I can't be with her." And he deliberately made the choice of negative volition, which is the only sin he could commit; and, consequently, he fell into sin. That's what these unbelievers are going to do in the millennium. They know what they have to lose. They will be so well-informed. They will have experienced the enormous blessing of this golden age. It'll be plain spiritual insanity for them to turn against Christ, but they will.

The iron-fisted rule of Jesus Christ has kept this open rebellion in check. Revelation 2:27 makes that clear to us: "And he shall rule them with a rod of iron as the vessels of the potter are broken to pieces, as I also have received authority from my father. There's not going to be any open sin. So, they will obey God, but it'll be out of fear. It will not be because they love Jesus Christ. They actually reject the truth. Consequently, the 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 discipline of negative volition syndrome hits them. They are caused to believe what is not true. If you will not believe the truth of doctrine, you'll believe a lie. People who keep pressing against the truth of the Word of God (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12) come under the discipline of deception, where God says, "OK, I'll let you believe the lie." And of course, the ultimate lie is that we ourselves are gods. So, these children born show that they they're willing to serve Satan rather than Christ, and they join Satan in his rebellion against the Lord.

So, war clouds gather once more on the horizon of nations. Disarmament suddenly comes to an end. We're not told how the weapons are produced, or what kind of weapons are brought together. Man hasn't been learning war for 1,000 years, Micah 4:3 tells us. But now armies will form all over the world.

Suddenly there will be a supply of some kind of weapons, and Satan will lead the army of unbelievers against the camp of the saints, Revelation 20:9 says, which means Palestine: "They will besiege the beloved city (Jerusalem)," and Jesus Christ then steps in; brings fire down from heaven; and, these armies go up in smoke (Revelation 20:9). So, the last military battle in history is concluded with Jesus Christ as the total victor.

Eternity

The Major Viewpoints of the Millennium

Postmillennialism

So, in other words, here's the 1,000-year millennium, and Christ comes at the end of it; and, thus the word "postmillennialism." Christ comes after the millennium is over. You might say, "Well, nobody believes that." Wrong. This view took a solar plexus blow in World War I, because associated with this view is that the world is going to get better. The horrors of World War I sent them reeling backwards, but it recouped itself. As I grew up, I knew about postmillennialism. Then World War II gave it a final blow (seemingly a permanent blow) from which it could not recover – but not the sin nature of man. This is becoming one of the most prominent points of view about the millennium of all the viewpoints.

Whitby would go to such a passage as Matthew 24:14: "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all nations, and then the end shall come." How could you be clearer than that? The gospel has to go to the whole world, and then the end comes. You know who's saying this now?

Now, don't get mad at me, like some of you do, because I tell you about what the religious leaders of our world are doing, or what other denominations are doing. I keep in touch with those things. Pat Robertson of the 700 Club had a whole program last week raising funds. What was his theme? Matthew 24:14 kept being bombarded on the TV screen, and he was saying, "Folks, send us the money. We're getting out the missionaries. We're getting out the word." Well, they may be doing that, but his reason was that Jesus can't come back until all the world has been reached with the gospel.

What he has done is totally ignored that this verse is in the midst of the tribulation. This verse applies to the tribulation. You just run your eye back up over the context, and you'll see that this has to do with the great tribulation. The kingdom of the millennium of the Messianic Kingdom of Christ will not come until the gospel has been preached to the whole tribulation world. God is going to raise up an enormous number of people (144,000 Jewish evangelists, for one thing), as well as gentile believers who will go everywhere preaching the gospel. Plus, who knows what kind of sophisticated electronics may exist at that time such that they can override television programs and punch the gospel in, in some way, before they can stop and turn it off. And people will be getting the word.

It is true that the time will come when this gospel will be preached, but it is not true to say that the rapture cannot take place until the gospel has been taken to all the world, which is what Pat Robertson is saying. That is not true. And this verse does not teach that.

Matthew 13:33: "He spoke another parable to them: 'The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of meal until it was all leavened.'" The ahead of the Bible department at Baylor University used this verse in telling us that the gospel was now going to permeate the whole world. He took this parable of the leaven, and said that leaven is the gospel.

I can't take the time to walk you through the Scriptures. You may remember that we've touched upon this enough – that the leaven in the Bible is a symbol of evil. It is never a symbol of what is good or right. Leaven is always evil. That's why, when we have the Lord's Supper, we have to use bread that is unleavened (no yeast), because to have yeast in it would be to break the symbol and suggest that there was sin in Christ. That is the same reason that we don't use fermented wine. It has leaven in it (yeast). That's what made it wine. It therefore is a contaminated thing. When you drink wine, you're drinking something that's the result of putrefaction. That's a nice word. Putrefaction is something that is decayed. When grapes decay, you get win. No wonder you get so heady with it. But the point is that the decay process (the yeast that makes it alcoholic) violates the symbol of the purity of the blood of Christ.

So, these interpretations of Scripture are completely wrong. And you will notice that here we have also the signal given to us of the necessity of male leadership: in a family; in a church; and, in the organization of the Word of God, because women, without male guidance spiritually, will go astray emotionally. It'll happen every time. If you're unmarried, then God is your father. If you are married, your husband is your father. Or if you're unmarried, and you have a human father who is oriented to the Word of God, he is your male guide. If God is not your male guide, your human father is, or your husband is, or your pastor-teacher becomes your male guide God for stability. Otherwise, a woman without a husband oriented to the Word of God is to be pitied. If her male guide is not functioning in his leadership role, she will go astray. I mean, not just maybe. She will go astray. And if the woman is the dominant factor, and the husband is a ninny who is following, you have the same bad situation. He has taken charge, and he is followed her leading.

Did you ever hear about the story of the Garden of Eden? That's what happened. That is exactly what happened. This is why the fact of this woman here is important.

Tommy Cross was telling me about a Ted Koppel program that I wish I had seen. He was interviewing some Presbyterian religious women leaders. And they were antagonistic toward the Bible. They were antagonistic toward male leadership. And they were saying that they were worship worshipers of Sophia. That's the Greek word for "wisdom, and "Sophia" is "Mother Earth." They were earth worshipers, and they proudly portrayed themselves as daughters of Sophia. And their God was female. One of them said, "We don't need justification." Doesn't that give you the creeps? Now for her to say that, she also had to say, "I don't believe the Bible," because the Bible very clearly says, "You must have justification." I know all of you could give me an instance definition of justification. ... Justification means to have absolute righteousness. You're as good as Jesus Christ. Justification is a legal term where God imputes (when you trust in Christ) Christ's absolute righteousness to you.

What was really the problem with these women? They were antagonistic to justification because justification is the product of males: a male God; a male Savior; a male who wrote the information down in Scripture; and, a male pastor-teacher who conveys that information. That's what bugged them. Therefore, they rejected the authority of Scripture, and could say such a terrible thing: "All we need is our devotion to Mother Earth."

How do they do that? This is the environmental movement? They do this by hugging trees, and kissing flowers, and avoiding stepping on bugs. This is Hinduism, folks. This is Hinduism at its core and at its heart. At the core of Hinduism is: "I internally am God." You can get mad at that if you wish, but that happens to be the biblical position of the authority relationship between a man and a woman. He must be the spiritual leader. The Bible says that it's not because there's anything inferior about Eve, or women, but because they were deceived by their natural temperament, and the male is to protect her from that deception.

There are so many subtle ways where these wives come along, and they're putting the screw and the bite on husbands who even know the Word of God, but don't have the internal fortitude to be able to stand up and carry their role forcefully. And their wives will look at them in eternity, across from them at the Judgment Seat of Christ, and say, "Oh, God, how I wish you had done your job for me, because my loss is now eternal."

Postmillennialism has this idea that the world is going to get better. And the achievement, ultimately, will be worldwide conversion, after which then, Christ is going to return. Some postmillennialists actually did hold to 1,000 years on earth as a golden age, but they couldn't quite sure where to put it. One of the leading proponents of postmillennialism is a financial advisor named Dr. Garry North, trained at Westminster Presbyterian Seminary. He is no dummy. I listened to a debate between him and Dave Hunt in downtown Dallas. Finally Hunt said, "Well, how long before the millennium will arrive? How long before the gospel will take over?" And Dr. North said, "It'll take another 2,000 years. In the meantime," Dr. North said, "we must seek to accumulate the powers of wealth. We must seek to accumulate the levers of wealth, because we Christians are going to keep passing it on to our children. And when society finally comes apart, and we start building this millennial 1,000 years, we Christians are going to be the ones to rebuild it on biblical principles.

Now, none of that comes from the Bible. That's all speculation, and it is not a literal interpretation of Scripture. It's a non-literal view. Postmillennialism is characterized by general optimism that things will get better in the world. This is why we premillennialists are often attacked that we so negative, and that we have no optimistic viewpoint. Why are premillennialists negative? Because people say, "It's going to get worse. I don't care what kind of government programs you have. I don't care what kind of societal programs you have. Society is going to degenerate."

So, you are knocking yourself out to make society better. And you have this group of Christians saying, "You're going to lose." That's what the Bible says. I read it to you out of 1 Timothy.

Dominion Theology

Next time, we come to the two most important millennial views. Please join us.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1993

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