Postmillennialism: Conquering the world for Jesus.

POSTMILLENNIALISM 'poʊst.mɪ'lɛn.i.əl.ɪz.əm noun. Belief the second coming of Christ Jesus takes place after a thousand-year period of blessedness.

[Postmillenarism 'poʊst.mɪ'lɛn.ər.ɪz.əm noun, postmillennial 'poʊst.mɪ'lɛn.i.əl adjective.]

Most historical resources will tell you postmillennialism became the dominant way Protestants understood the End Times in the 1800s: We Christians were gonna evangelize the world! Roman Catholics would fire the pope, the Russians and Greeks would fire their patriarchs, the Turks would quit Islam, the Indians would quit Hinduism, the Jews would turn to Jesus. and everybody’d become Protestant. And once we’d done so, we’d enter the millennium.

Now, Christians of that era weren’t that naïve: All this stuff of course sounds extremely unlikely. It’d be a lot of work, and take years, to convince all these groups to become Christian. Centuries maybe; Congregationalist evangelist Jonathan Edwards, who promoted his belief in postmillennialism during the Great Awakening revival of the 1730s, figured it might not be achieved till the year 2000. It’d take an extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit—but, Edwards firmly held, it’ll happen. It’s inevitable.

And when it arrives, it’ll begin a thousand years of grace, peace, and prosperity. No more war, no more inhumanity towards one another; Christians will follow Jesus wholeheartedly, and work together to solve all humanity’s problems. With the Spirit’s help and power, we’ll the earth into a utopian paradise.

And then Jesus returns—and it’s the end of the world, and off we go to New Heaven.

This postmillennial worldview is why you’ll see a bevy of reform movements in the 1800s. Christians, spurred by their postmillennialist preachers, realized it was time to get started! Gotta ask ourselves, “What would Jesus do?” and do that. Gotta seek and save the lost. Gotta lay the groundwork for the new Christian world we’d help bring about. Gotta encourage the culture to get more Christian, more humanitarian, more righteous. Onward and upward!

Three things wrong with this description.

First and most obvious, Christianity historically teaches us Jesus can return at any time. But postmillennialism holds off that return for a thousand years after the millennium starts. So, because we obviously haven’t been working on it, if we can’t get the millennium started till the year 2265, Jesus isn’t returning till 3265. He’s a thousand-plus years away; not near.

Second, this particular postmillennial trend was largely an American Evangelical thing. Yes, there were Evangelicals outside the United States who were postmillennial… but more often they were amillennial, same as the Orthodox and Catholics. They figured the millennium of Revelation 20 represents the Christian Era, i.e. right now. Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, Ro 8.34 reigning right now. And when he returns, it’s to end history and the world, and take us to New Heaven. There’s no special utopian millennium coming; Jesus is coming. Again, he can return at any time, y’know.

Third, the people who not only held a postmillennial view, but promoted and pushed it really hard, weren’t only doing it to further the cause of Christ. Weren’t always primarily doing it for Christ Jesus either. A significant segment of their plans were—and still are—political.

’Cause if Jesus isn’t coming back to personally reign over the millennium… who’s gonna do that? Who’s gonna be in charge of the novus ordo seclorum? Well, Christians. Which Christians? Well… them; the postmillennial proclaimers. Or at least those fellow Christians who absolutely agree with them about how the new world order’s gonna be run.

What you’re regularly, invariably gonna find just beneath the surface of postmillennialism, is a political plan for a theocracy, a government by and for Christians. Not by and for every Christian; it’s gonna favor one particular branch, sect, or denomination of Christianity. If the leader of a particular postmillennial group is Baptist, it’s gonna look mighty Baptist. If he’s Catholic, very Catholic. If she’s Presbyterian, super Presbyterian. If he’s involved in the New Apostolic Reformation, it’s gonna be riddled with NAR teachings and terminology.

And if she’s a white nationalist, it’s gonna very much be that. Doesn’t matter that God’s kingdom is described in the scriptures as including “every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;” Rv 5.9 they figure those other peoples are gonna be conquered subjects, second-class citizens who get grudgingly included in their millennial kingdom, but certainly can’t be granted any real power within it. Like blacks in the United States during the Jim Crow era, or Indians under the British Empire.

Yeah, the dirty little secret of postmillennialism is the more we look at the way these folks plan to run the millennium, the less Christian it gets.

Christian exceptionalism, and Christian empires.

When the Roman Empire became Christian, it was easy for Romans to assume Jesus ruled the world, for they figured they ruled the world (well, everything they chauvinistically considered the “civilized” world), and Jesus ruled them; therefore by the transitive property Jesus ruled the world. The millennium was happening right then. Hence the prevalent amillennial view.

Then the Roman Empire receded east, and the the Great Schism happened—western Europeans became Roman Catholic, eastern Europeans became Orthodox, and both branches called the other “heretic.” Made it harder to claim Jesus ruled the world, but he still ruled all the “world” they cared about, so they stuck with amillennialism.

Then the Protestant Reformation happened in the early 1500s, and fractured western Christianity: Instead of one church, a dozen, all of ’em claiming to be the true church; all of ’em calling the others heretic.

And so much for the amillennial view. Clearly Christians didn’t rule the civilized world. Or at least their stripe of Christianity didn’t—Roman Catholics didn’t, Lutherans didn’t, Calvinists didn’t, Anglicans didn’t, etc. (Eastern Christians figured they did rule the civilized world, ’cause they didn’t consider western Christianity all that civilized. They kinda weren’t wrong.)

So you can see how postmillennialism could arise out of that mess: Once their sect, once “the real Christians,” figured out how to seize the world for Jesus and rule it for a thousand years, that oughta fulfill the biblical idea of “millennium,” and… Jesus can return! And end the world.

This gotta-conquer-the-world-for-Jesus mindset is part and parcel of postmillennialism. It helped European nations—and the United States—justify the creation of worldwide empires so they could spread Christendom to the heathens.

Every predominantly Christian country has wanted to imagine they have a central role in bringing God’s kingdom into the world. Just look at all the American End Times novels and movies which feature Americans in prominent roles—even though the scriptures never talk about the Americas. We Americans wanna be included so bad, we’ll even make claims about the End Times based on our lunar eclipses; who cares if none of them are visible in Jerusalem.

It appeals to our patriotism. It appeals to our pride and selfishness. We wanna be special; postmillennialism says we absolutely are. It’s our manifest destiny to be powerful and great… um, for God! Yeah, that’s why. And if it just happens to bring our homelands a whole lot of control, power, and wealth at the same time, that’s just a bonus.

Although considering how many Mammonist empire-builders spent way more time and resources on getting filthy rich, than on spreading the gospel—and murdering lots of inconvenient indigenous people to achieve those goals—it becomes obvious the gospel was never more than a minor goal of any of these empires. Not that they still didn’t pay it lip service; the Nazis particularly talked about the thousand-year reich they were trying to create.

Most historians figure Americans began to fall away from our postmillennial views after all the carnage of the American Civil War, but what really shut the door on the idea was World War 1. Evangelicals largely began to realize who are we kidding?—lookit all the Christians killing Christians! Prussian Christians killing British Christians killing Russian Christians killing Austrian Christians killing American Christians… Humanity is way too depraved to establish any functional millennium.

So American Evangelicals, who have managed to largely sway Christians in the rest of the world, came to adopt premillennialism, the idea the millennium can’t happen till Jesus personally returns to run it. And that’s largely what you’ll find in our churches: Lots and lots of premillennialism.

Well, till you discuss politics. Then suddenly it’s back to postmillennialism. Lots of “We have to take back this country for Jesus, and make it a Christian nation, and that’ll make us great.” These are postmillennial teachings. They’re so deeply embedded in American patriotic rhetoric, American Christians—whether we believe in amillennialism or premillennialism—will repeat ’em over and over, and don’t even notice.

Millennialist dissonance.

And I’ve witnessed it all my life. The very same people who say, “I sure hope Jesus returns soon so he can put things right!” or “This is not my home; heaven is,” will casually also say, “We gotta put people in office who promote good Christian values.” They’ll never notice how they’re constantly switching back and forth between two different End Times views. It never, ever occurs to them they simultaneously hold two different End Times views. One for church, and one for state.

As I said, postmillennialism is deeply embedded in American patriotic rhetoric. Whenever you go to secular political gatherings and rallies, you’re gonna hear a form of postmillennialism—about American values and virtues and democracy and greatness, and how we’ve gotta spread that to the rest of the world, and make the whole world better by it. But this isn’t the gospel of Christ Jesus; it’s Americanism. A different gospel.

Whenever Christians get involved in these political gatherings, you watch: You’re gonna start hearing postmillennialism from them too. They think they’re bringing their Christian values to their politics, but what actually happens instead is their politics filters their Christianity. Rather than demand their party conform to Jesus, their Christianity is gonna conform to the party. Sometimes they’re totally aware this is going on. More often, like the postmillennialism, they don’t even notice.

If they’re premillennial, they’re gonna flip to postmillennial. It’s no longer about awaiting Jesus’s return so he can rule us properly; it’s always about us taking this country for him, and running it “his” way—by might or by power, not by his Spirit. Zc 4.6

If they’re amillennial, they’re likewise gonna flip to postmillennial. It’s no longer about how this world and its lusts are passing away. 1Jn 2.17 It’s about turning this world into kind of a New Earth.

Premillennials will insist they’re still premillennial. Yes they and their political party intend to conquer the world for Jesus—but not because they imagine their new world order is the millennium. When Jesus returns, he’ll still establish the real millennium. Yet at the very same time, their political goals are to remake the world exactly “as Jesus wants it.” This way, when he returns, he won’t have to overthrow anyone or anything. He’ll just say, “Well done, my good and faithful servants! Keep doing as you’re doing.” And he can supervise, while they continue to run things as the saints who’ll reign with him.

That’s not at all how I understand Jesus’s reign to work: He’s gonna overthrow everything. Every last political structure we set up, for all power belongs in his hands, not ours. Especially every political structure we set up which violates Jesus’s teachings. You think King Jesus is gonna tolerate our border walls and concentration camps for a second? You think he’s gonna greet any of the racists who created and promote these things with the words, “My good and faithful servant”?

But I digress. My point is that you recognize this inconsistency. If your politics somehow manage to have a different End Times view than you claim to believe, you need to fix this. Become one or the other. Preferably the one that best follows Jesus!