The Advent story doesn’t seem to sit particularly well with post-millennial thought.
What do I mean?
Advent is about Israel languishing in her sin, darkness and
exile. Pretty much helpless until Jesus
came and fixed things. The faithful
could do little more than wait and hope.
God has to bring about His own prophecy, right? Would the faithfulness of Israel have moved
up God’s timeline for sending Messiah?
In our eschatology debates, this is usually either a pre-mil
or an a-millennial perspective. The
post-mil view says that Jesus has empowered the church to advance the gospel on
earth, without Him needing to come back and make it happen.
Can Advent and Post-millennialism live together with
consistency??
Yes they can. Here’s
how.
Most Post-Mil folks are also Calvinists, and emphasizers of
the redemptive history told in the Bible.
The key is to know where you are in God’s story.
1 – Jehoshaphat or Ehud?
When an army came against Jehoshaphat, he gathered Israel,
and prayed to God: “we don’t know what to do – we are waiting on you.” When Eglon oppressed Israel, Ehud marched
right into his throne room (then into his bathroom!) and stabbed him in the
belly. There ARE times when we have done
all we can do, and have to leave events to the Lord’s hands. And there are times when we have to go take
action by faith to fulfill the dominion mandate. Israel back from exile, awaiting the Messiah,
was partly faithful (Simeon, Anna, Zachariah, Elizabeth) and partly compromised
(Sanhedrin).
The key here is to have the wisdom to know where the
boundaries of responsibility lie.
Our nation is becoming decidedly more secular and godless in
its culture and life. To what extent can
I do something about that? Post-mil
folks often lay heavy burdens on believers here, that you can always do more,
and if the culture isn’t becoming more godly then you individually, or the
Church corporately, are failing. Not
so. But pre- and a-millennial folks also
lay a heavy burden too, saying, you can’t do anything but wallow in your pessimism
and wait for God to come and fix it.
Sometimes it’s time to pray and wait.
Sometimes it’s time to work. Don’t
let an eschatological view say your life should always be one or the other.
Sometimes you’re at a point in the story where you’re going
to lose the battle you’ve been faithfully fighting unless help arrives. Your spouse will die of cancer; your neighbor
will die in unbelief. Other times, you’re
going to lose the battle because you’ve been despairing and negligent, unless
you buck up and take action. Lead your
family in worship; go to the town hall meeting and speak up.
2 – Postmillennialism does NOT believe in a constant
increase of faithfulness, with no setbacks anywhere. The period from the exile up to Christ’s
advent was one of those setbacks, when God chastised and refined His people. Today, Christian faith is waning in the big
picture in the Northern Hemisphere of God’s earth. But it is waxing profoundly in parts of the
south. To note the setbacks is not a
betrayal of faith in God’s Pentecostal power given to the church to bring the
gospel to the nations.
3 – I remain divided between the post- and a-millennial
views. I grew up a-mil, believing that
the spiritual battle goes on without a clear victor until the end, when Christ
comes and mops up. I’ve recently become
more post-mil, believing that the Lord will see the nations of the earth become
His own. Abraham is the heir of the
world (Romans 4:13). But will that
happen AT Christ’s coming, or before?
Whatever the answer, let us work and pray, pray and work for the advance
of the gospel wherever we can, however we can, as much as we can.
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