24/07/2025
"From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers;
for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable."
«« Romans 11:28-29 »»
POSTMILLENNIALISM
"Christ will return, He will come in a glorious second coming to earth - but NOT to establish His kingdom, but rather AFTER His kingdom has been established.
Who will establish it? The church.
The church will have an increasing influence in the world. The church will become more influential, more impactful, more spiritually powerful.
The church will move out of its own environs to capture nations, leaders, ideologies, philosophies, theories, religions, and bring them all into captivity to Christ.
In the world, things will get better and better and better as the church becomes more powerful and more influential.
And when the church has brought about the dominating influence of Christ across the world, He will then come and end everything, and establish the new heaven and the new earth, which is the eternal state.
Postmillennialists think things are going to get better.
That’s a hard sell, frankly."
AMILLENNIALISM
"The alpha privative in the Greek language means a negative, so there is the view that there is NO millennium; that what John is writing about in Revelation 20 is very vague, may refer to nothing other than a long time in which the church flourishes on earth, simply referring to that kingdom which is spiritual - that is, the rule of Christ over those who belong to Him while on earth.
And there are others who believe that that refers to heaven; that refers to the experience of the saints in heaven.
But, for certain, according to amillennialists, there will be NO thousand-year reign of Christ on the earth.
When He comes, everything ends immediately.
NO kingdom on earth ruled by Christ BEFORE He gets here, and NO kingdom on earth ruled by Christ AFTER He gets here."
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Now, the truth of the matter is, those are just two ways to look at the same thing; postmillennialism and amillennialism is really the same thing.
I like to call amillennialism negative, and postmillennialism positive.
That’s just two ways to look at the same thing.
It’s two ways to view human history.
One says it’s not the kingdom. The other says it is the kingdom.
One says moving toward the coming of Christ there will be no kingdom.
The other says there will be a kingdom.
But in both cases it will be the flow of history under the influence of the church, so they’re really looking at the same thing.
One calls it a kingdom and says it will expand and expand and expand - that’s the positive spin.
The other looks at it as a spiritual kingdom also but says it will decline and decline and decline until Jesus finally comes.
But in both cases, they would DENY the ACTUAL thousand-year reign of Christ, and they would deny that Christ will reign and rule on earth and literally fulfill all His promises to the nation Israel given in the Old Testament covenants.
Whether you’re an amillennialist or a postmillennialist, you basically say Israel forfeited all its promises.
Forfeited all its privileges, forfeited all those things that God declared in covenant that He would give to them in the future; and they forfeit it by their disobedience to the Mosaic Covenant, by their apostasy from true religion and by their rejection of their Messiah.
Therefore, Israel has been permanently set aside, so that the only kingdom will be that kingdom that we call the church, ruled by Christ, either expanding to take over the world, or existing in the world, and finally in heaven."
— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillenialist, Part 1