Eschatology

Eschatology should not be a map to divine the future, but a source of hope for the present.

Overview of the Three Visions

Eschatology is the field of Christian theology that concerns the study of the last things - the future return of Christ, the resurrection, the rapture, the final judgment, and eternal blessedness.

Each term is distinguished by a prefix attached to the word 'milenio' (from the Latin mille = thousand, and annus = year).

Premillennialism

Premillennialism is the belief that Jesus physically returned to Earth before the Millennium, heralding a literal messianic era of a thousand years of peace. It is based on a literal interpretation of Revelation 20:1-6.

Premillennialists can be divided into two groups:

•Classic Premillennialism: Comes from the time of the Church Fathers.
•Dispensationalist Premillennialism: Includes the idea of a secret Rapture before the Great Tribulation.

Amillennialism

Amillennialism interprets Revelation 20:1-6 as pertaining to the present time, and holds that Christ currently reigns in Heaven with the deceased saints. This interpretation sees the symbolism of Revelation as referring to a spiritual conflict between Heaven and Hell, not a physical conflict on Earth.

The number 'thousand' is seen as symbolic and numerological. Amillennialism is common among denominations such as Lutherans, Reformed, Anglicans, Methodists and many Messianic Jews.

Postmillennialism

The postmillennialist believes that the millennium is an era (not literally a thousand years) during which Christ will reign on the earth, not from a literal, earthly throne, but through the gradual increase of the Gospel and its power to transform lives. After this gradual Christianization of the world, Christ will return.

Historical Development

Church leaders affirmed a premillennialist reading of Scripture in the early centuries. However, Augustine converted from premillennialism to amillennialism. Amillennialism gained ground after Christianity became a legal religion and was systematized by Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century.

Postmillennialism increased in popularity after the Protestant Reformation and was the dominant view among Reformed theologians of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Maranata

The biblical focus is vigilance and hope. The certainty that God's justice will prevail gives us the strength to resist evil today.

John Nelson Darby and the Invention of the Rapture

Modern premillennial dispensationalism—with its pretribulationist 'secret rapture' doctrine—has a surprisingly late and well-documented birth date. John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), an Irish priest who abandoned the Church of Ireland to become the main figure of the Plymouth Brethren, introduced in the years 1820–1830 the dichotomy that God acts in history through 'two parallel peoples' (ethnic Israel and the Gentile Church) in watertight 'dispensations'. Until the 19th century, the theological term 'rapture' functioned only as a verb descriptive of the resurrection on Judgment Day — Darby transmuted it into a noun, creating an autonomous eschatological event. The socio-political context matters: Darby formulated his theology in the reactionary environment of conservative Anglo-Irish clergy who saw the privileges of state churches melting away in the face of post-French Revolution democracies. The doctrine was exported to North America by the Scofield Reference Bible (1909) and popularized by the Left Behind series and the books by Hal Lindsey. At the opposite pole, the New Apostolic Reformation and its Seven Mountain Mandate promote 'dominationist millenarianism': the belief that Christians have a divine imperative to equip all spheres of society and establish a theocracy that physically makes the return of Christ viable.