Is Millennialism Trivial?

Respected Baptist pastor Mark Dever recently said was that any church group that requires premillennialism is sinning. Check out http://expositorythoughts.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/devers-big-statement/

My first thought is to ask is when Mark Dever will start allowing infant baptism in his Baptist church? It turns out we all have important secondary issues, don't we?

Being accused of movement-wide sin bugs me as an EFCA pastor, especially when what I'm being accused of isn't a sin, and when the idea behind it -- the idea that millennial views have no practical impact on Christian spirituality or world missions -- is so wrongheaded. Anyone who says that either has a hidden agenda, or is not familiar enough with the historical or psychological affects of eschatology in Christian history.

Millennial beliefs do have practical consequences. The apostle Paul thought eschatology was so important that he excommunicated three men for being nascent preterists. Alexander, Hymenaeus, and Philetus were three men who taught that the general resurrection had already taken place (2 Timothy 2:18). Paul compared this loony teaching to infectious gangrene (v. 17).

Their eschatological doctrines reflected defective faith, bad consciences, and they wrecked othe rpeople's faith (1 Timothy 1:19). Eschatological error was so important in this case that Paul turned them over to Satan, so that they would learn not to blaspheme (v. 20). Paul obviously didn't think that eschatology was trivial.

So-called "partial" preterism, which teaches that most of the events described in the book of Revelation happened at the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, maintains its partialness only by brute force of will. Partial preterists, like R.C. Sproul, still maintain a future return of Christ, and a future resurrection of the just and the unjust. This keeps the partial preterist inside the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy. But the interpretive method of partial preterism, that leads it to say that everything described in Revelation 4-19 already happened back in 70 AD. should be applied to Revelation 19-22 for the sake of consistency.

But the informed partial preterist knows that "Danger Lies In That direction". So they rein up their apocalyptic horses up short at Revelation 19. But there's no good logical reason that they should, given their method of interpretation and their hostility to premillennialism. This is what I mean by mere force of will. Their decision to stop being preterists at Revelation 19 is arbitrary.

Postmillenialism teaches us that it is our task to politically and culturally take over the world! This teaching results because the postmillennialist takes all of the Old Testament predictions of a militarily victorious Israel in the future, and applies them to the Christian Church in the present. Postmillennialism is a member of the amillennial "family", with optimism regarding the end of days replacing pessimism, and a denial of the future existence of Antichrist replacing an affirmation of the same. If amillennialism didn't exist, postmillennialism wouldn't exist either. Amillennialism is the gateway drug to postmillennialism.

Under the influence of postmillennialism, the Christian Church pours millions of dollars and millions of man-hours into a fruitless crusade to Christianize the current world order. Postmillennialism would turn the EFCA away from world missions, and bog us down in theonomist militancy. We would be taught that we will turn the darkness to light, in spite of the fact that the unregenerate mind cannot obey the laws of God (Romans 8:6-9), and Satan rules the unregenerate world (1 John 5:18-19, Ephesians 2:1-2).

Postmillennialism leads you down a dead-end street. Eventually postmillennial Christians are forced to water down what the kingdom of God is supposed to look like, so that lame claims can be made that the kingdom has come, sort of. (In one case I was told that Jonas Salk discovering the vaccine for polio was the Millennium).

Please! We should not defame God's great and glorious future work this way. And we shouldn't confuse the gifts of common grace, of which Jonas Salk's discovery was a wonderful manifestation, with the Millennial kingdom!

The Christ who told Peter, "Put down your sword" is replaced with an avenging Christ clothed in garments stained purple with the blood of His enemies. This is the fruit postmillennialism eventually brings you. It regresses the church back to a European-style merger of church and state, which is everything the Free Church stood against!

Does it matter how we define the kingdom of God, and what we say it will look like when it comes, or by what means it will come? If we say that, yes, these questions are important, then let us not inconsistently preach that millennial views have no vital, direct affect on the EFCA!

These are good and compelling reasons to maintain premillennialism as a standard of doctrine and fellowship. Premillennialism teaches us the right view of the kingdom of God; and as a result, it molds our doctrine of the church's nature, authority, and mission. It represents the Reformation method of interpretation, the historical-grammatical method, but with this one crucial difference -- it is the historical-grammatical method applied to prophecy, an application that Luther and Calvin were unwilling to make.

Premillennialism teaches the right view of the relationship between Church and State, and keeps us from kingdom-on-earth dreams. What its critics deride as pre-mil pessimism is, in reality, reality, and it is they who are seduced by utopian dreams, which are not good things.

Edit August 10: As I mention below in the commbox, I've changed my opinion back to a more moderately toned version of my prior view, that we should retain premillennialism in the EFCA. I think the harm that preterism and postmillennialism themselves do outweigh the "we don't even include Calvinism/Arminianism" principle I used a couple of years ago at conference while at the mic. In fact, I am concerned that the EFCA not be flooded with Reformed guys who would have the unstated goal of making the EFCA partisanly Reformed in its theology. Opening up the door to amillennialism, postmillennialism, and preterism would do this, and I fear we would lose our character.