Premillennialism: Jesus is gonna rule the world.

PREMILLENNIALISM 'pri.mɪ'lɛn.i.əl.ɪz.əm noun. Belief after Christ Jesus’s return, he and his saints will reign on earth a thousand years.

[Premillenarism 'pri.mɪ'lɛn.ər.ɪz.əm noun., premillennial 'pri.mɪ'lɛn.i.əl adjective.]

As I’ve written before, all my life I’ve been a part of Evangelical churches which taught premillennialism: They all believed when Jesus returns, it’s to literally set up God’s kingdom here on earth.

It’s a literal interpretation of Revelation 20:

Revelation 20.4-6 NRSVue

4Then I saw thrones, and those seated on them were given authority to judge. I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its brand 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. 6Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. Over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him a thousand years.

Since Revelation consists of apocalyptic visions which aren’t meant to be taken literally, most Christians don’t take this passage literally either, and are amillennial: They figure the millennium represents the Christian Era, i.e. right now, and Jesus and his saints kinda rule over it; then Jesus will end the world at his second coming, and off we go to New Heaven. Amillennialists say we premillennialists are claiming a metaphor is literally gonna happen. It’s like claiming when Jesus returns, a giant mustard tree has to grow in Jerusalem for the birds to nest under.

And I actually agree with them: We can’t interpret this passage as if this is how things are literally gonna happen. But we can interpret it—same as we interpret Revelation 21’s descriptions of the New Heaven and New Earth—as how things are sorta gonna be. Jesus conquers the world, Rv 19.11-16 takes out the Beast and his armies Rv 19.17-21 (whether you consider the Beast a specific political leader, or all the corrupt systems currently ruling the world), chains Satan and imprisons it in the Abyss, Rv 20.1-3 then resurrects his saints so they can serve Jesus, and Jesus rules the world. Rv 20.4-6 And since Jesus conquers the world before he personally takes over—and the world surely hasn’t been conquered by Christendom, much less Jesus—it stands to reason these are future events. Jesus’s millennial reign is not now. It’s later.

Oh, and it likely doesn’t last a literal millennium. The apostle John no doubt used that word to describe a significantly long time. But if it lasts 100 years, 1,000 years, 10,000 years, or Jesus is planning to rule this world till our sun finally goes nova, we Christians ought not be picky.

What’s it gonna look like? Your guess is as good as mine.

If you’ve read the gospels, and I hope to goodness you have, Jesus spent all his time in those books teaching his kids about the kingdom of God. It’s how he expects us to live now; I’ve absolutely no doubt it’s how he expects us to live once he’s returned. God’s kingdom is gonna transform from something we Christians individually practice, to something the world is expected to practice.

I don’t know how Jesus is gonna implement it. Knowing his character, he’s gonna do it kindly and patiently. But to listen to certain Christians describe it, he’s gonna have… well, about as much patience as they have, and some of them are mighty impatient and legalistic. Too many Christians have tried to implement God’s kingdom through political might, and in so doing have been entirely unchristlike. They’re gonna make just the worst priests—which is why I expect Jesus isn’t gonna have those legalists supervise anyone till they’ve grown up a bunch. They still have to learn what “I desire mercy not sacrifice” means. Ho 6.6, Mt 9.13

Jesus’s descriptions of God’s kingdom are pretty much all we know about what the millennium is gonna look like—because all we have on the millennium, is that Revelation 20 passage I quoted above, and an abundance of scriptures which jibe with the idea of God’s kingdom on earth. But John doesn’t say anything more about the millennium. Nothing about how Jesus sets it up; nothing about how Jesus governs it; nothing about whether he’ll get pushback from unrepentant pagans—and I’ve no doubt he will get that, because selfish human nature won’t change. We Christians will all be transformed at Jesus’s second coming, 1Co 15.51-52 and our human nature won’t be selfish anymore, but no doubt we will still have a lot to unlearn—and John doesn’t say anything about that either.

This is why the future millennial reign of Jesus varies in description from preacher to preacher, Christian to Christian. Even if they believe the Darbyist view (which Darbyists call “premillennial dispensationalism”) it’s gonna vary from Darbyist to Darbyist, depending on whose books they’ve been reading. People have their own ideas about what Jesus’s millennial reign should look like. Unsurprisingly, a lot of those views reflect our own attitudes, prejudices, and politics:

• Is Jesus gonna love on everybody, or smite the wicked?
• Is he gonna add our existing religious and political institutions to his government, or is he gonna knock ’em all down?
• Is his reign something pagans oughta fear, for it means their rule is over; or are they finally gonna see for themselves (without us Christians mucking the message up with our own fleshly hypocrisy) how awesome Jesus is, and willingly turn to him?
• Are the newly-resurrected Christians gonna magically become perfectly-behaved saints, or will we still have a lot of growing up to do?
• True, Christians are now gonna live forever, 1Co 15.54 but might Jesus also suspend death for all the non-Christians too?

There are tons of theories about what the millennium will look like, and I won’t get into all of them here. Some of ’em are based on scripture—often verses pulled out of context, but sometimes not. They’re all our attempts to fill in the massive hole in our knowledge. We wanna know exactly what’ll happen, and Jesus tells us nothing. For, I believe, good reason: We’ll start making plans about how to run things, whereas in the millennium, he runs things.

I admit I have plenty of my own biases in this area. I can’t believe, as certain Darbyists claim, that Jesus is gonna take upon himself a radically different character once he steps into his role as King. That’s a very common human behavior, where politicians act one way on the campaign trail, and another when in power; where powerless princes pretty much do as they please when they’re not clothed in the offices of state (i.e. William Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays), but either get more noble when they take power (Henry V) or more rotten (Richard III, Macbeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Measure for Measure, etc.).

Claiming Jesus is somehow gonna change into a millennial tyrant, defies scripture. When we say “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever,” He 13.8 KJV we don’t just mean he doesn’t change doctrinally. He’s the same man he’s always been, and the Jesus we see in the gospels is not gonna be corrupted by power, nor gonna say, “That grace and love I taught you in the Sermon on the Mount? How am I gonna shatter the nations with a rod of iron Ps 2.9 with that rubbish?”

Nope; Jesus is a good man who always does the right thing. And because he’s also God, his divine nature means his human nature is never gonna go wrong. He’s the only person power doesn’t corrupt. When he rules the world, his reign is gonna be just as good and right as he is.

And humanity’s gonna have a chance to see this for themselves. Without the massive filter of horse manure which currently gets in the way of how they see Jesus. Plenty of people presume he thinks the very same way they do, so of course they love him; they love themselves! But once he stands on the earth again, they can’t project themselves upon him anymore. They’re gonna realize he’s a real person—and his own person. They’re gonna see for themselves he’s profoundly better than they ever imagined. And they might recoil because they finally realize they’re so awful, Lk 5.8 but Jesus is gonna love ’em anyway, and still tell them, “Follow me.”

Yeah, there’s gonna be some who never do repent. There always are. The millennium’s not gonna be utopia. There’s still gonna be weeds in the wheat. But with Jesus finally in charge, things’ll be way better.

This is why I believe premillennialism is the most hopeful and gracious of the millennial views. (Well, when it’s not heavily distorted by angry ingrates.) And I believe it to be the view most consistent with the scriptures… although I admit the apocalyptic nature of Revelation means I could still be wrong, and the amillennials are right. But fixing this world instead of simply blowing it up, giving pagans a really good chance instead of letting them perish in ignorance, sounds way more in line with God’s character to me.