Problems with Millennial Views

People often ask me what view of the millennium I hold. I always tell them I don't hold a view of the millennium. They always look at me rather perplexed, as though it is somehow impossible to have an eschatology without a view of the millennium. I, instead, don't take a view because I don't think the Bible necessarily gives us a view. Instead, it gives us a more general, rather than specific, eschatology that is sometimes described as "inaugurated." This generic inaugrated view allows for the three most common positions we see throughout church history: historic premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism. The funny thing about each of these is that they often quote passages that simply support a general, inaugurated view to support theirspecific, millennial view. However, since each of these views assume the inaugurated view, no one is proving anything with these passages.

Instead, what I would want to show is that each view has problems. This is not an exhaustive list of problems. There are others. It is just to show that there are some issues with trying to be specific if the Scripture is not, and that is the point of this post. The issues themselves prove that the Bible does not teach these specifics, and is being more logical than chronological, more generic than specific in the way that it discusses its inaugurated eschatology.

For instance, in Historic-Premillenialism, Christ comes back and reigns with  His resurrected people for a thousand years until the end. The wicked are then resurrected after that thousand years. However, this is built off of a literal reading of Revelation 20. In 1 Corinthians 15:24ff., however, Christ must reign by the Father's side in heaven until He puts all of His enemies under His feet.

²³ But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. ²⁴ Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. ²⁵ For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. ²⁶ The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ²⁷ For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. ²⁸ When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

The final enemy is death that is put to its end at the resurrection of the saints. However, if Christ returns, and He still has enemies left according to Revelation 20, then death is not the last enemy, Christ still has enemies on the earth a thousand years after the resurrection, and He should therefore have never returned, since He was to sit at the right hand of God and reign until He subdued all of them. It seems in this context that putting one under His feet has to do with permanently ridding the comsos of his enemies, and hence, He hands the dominion of the spiritual realm over to the Father in order to take His earthly seat on the Davidic throne to rule the nations. This timeline doesn't seem to add up.

In Amillennialism, the tribulation occurs in AD 70, or is concurrent with the millennium, and the millennium refers to the entire age of the church through which Christ reigns spiritually with His people. The problem with this view is that those who enter the millennium in Revelation 20, again the primary passage from which the millennial idea comes, are saints who have been martyred by being faithful to Christ through persecution. Their resurrection is clearly a physical one, not a spiritual one, in the passage, as they are already Christians who have been regenerated and died for their faith. They come alive and reign with Christ. Yet, if this is a spiritual thing in heaven, they are already "alive" as souls in heaven before the millennium (20:4ff.).

⁴ I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They^[a] had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. ⁵ (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. ⁶ Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.

All of the explanations for this seems to wrap themselves around the idea of "coming alive" as regeneration; but as said before, these saints are already dead and had been regenerated when they became Christians before death. That's actually what led to their being martyred because, as regenerated Christians, they refused to worship the beast and his image (a reference to Domitian, not Nero, so this isn't even beginning in AD 70). So the people who enter the millennium are regenerated and live out their Christians lives faithfully before it. They enter only once they are resurrected. The idea of the first resurrection being spriitual, then, is not supported by the text, and therefore, does not support Amillennialism.

In Postmillennialism, as we just saw, Christ must put all things underneath His feet before He reclaims the earthly Davidic throne. This is done by a gradual claim over His enemies, the last one, as 1 Corinthians 15 states, is death. However, one of Christ's enemies is the chaos of the created order itself that is fallen and subjected to futility. Wild animals, floods, etc. display the hostility of creation toward Christ and His people. They are an enemy that must be subdued. Yet, postmills tend to put everything in terms of politics and miss this point. If the natural order must be subdued in a process now, since Christ rules over all things now, then why does Romans 8 state that it will not be until after the last enemy of 1 Corinthians 15, i.e., death, is done away with in the revealing of the sons of God at the resurrection? In other words, not only is it not gradual, but it is after the doing away of the final enemy if we were to put a timeline on it. So it's the last enemy after the last enemy, as Postmills will often say while mocking Premills that there is still an enemy left after the last enemy is destroyed.

¹⁹ For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that^[h] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³ Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

This non-gradual descriptions pervades the Bible, as all of the microcosmic eschatological events seem to display a violent upheavel of the wicked in God's deliverance of the righteous, and if they are types of what is to come, it seems odd to be so different than what is to come. In continuity with this, Daniel 2 seems to indicate that the little stone comes along and destroys all of the other kingdoms all at once. The text in v. 44 states that there is no kingdom left for any other people. It is only then that the stone grows big and fills up the earth, i.e., after all of the other nations are destroyed, not during their destruction or before. This is because Old Testament eschatology is focused on the consummated eschaton and does not know of an inaugurated one. Yet, this text and the others mentioned are usually used as prooftexts that support rather than reject a Postmill view if taken as literally communicating a timeline or the manner in which the kingdom takes over the world. 

Again, there are lots of other issues in the abuse of texts that are taken out of context and the use of texts with which everyone would agree. The most comical one is that of calling Postmillennialism the eschatology of victory when Jesus wins and inherits all things He is marked to inherit in all of them. The true eschatology of victory, of course, is when these three views are saturated in Calvinism, as the gospel accomplishes exactly what God intends it to accomplish, and again, He completely and utterly wins in every single one of them both in this age and in the one to come. 

But what of these contradictory timelines? Again, I think it is simply a matter of trying to bleed too much out of these texts that are not giving us timelines, but rather generalities of the eschaton, which is why conflicting images are used of both the renewed cosmos and hell itself (e.g., fire, darkness, deep water, barren land, etc.). Perhaps, it is the problem of wanting to know too much of what is not important to know. It is sufficient for God's people to know that He wins, we win, and what we do in being faithful to preach the gospel will yield exactly what God wants it to, nothing more and nothing less.