Four Views of Eschatology

If you're in the back, scoot forward because it might be kind of hard to see.

Literally didn't move at all.

Literally not.

You're just going to be looking at...

Betrayed by my own intern.

You just said Christian just like...

You're good.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Christian joins the pastoral team, thinks he's exempt from all the rules.

Okay.

Alright, if you have your Bibles, let's open up to Revelation chapter 20.

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

Revelation chapter 20.

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

As promised, what we're going to be doing is we're going to be talking about the millennium.

We're starting tonight and we are going to be continuing for a duration of time.

An undisclosed duration of time.

I was making this and I told Ann, I was like, I think I'm going to get through all four views

in one night.

And then I went through the message and I got through like one view and I said, okay,

so we might be here a few weeks, but that's okay.

That's okay.

So here's the plan.

I'm going to read verses one through 10 and then we're going to get into the weeds of this

thing and get into the details.

And I'm going to set some ground rules after I read the verses.

Okay.

Alright, so Revelation chapter 20 verses one through 10.

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven holding in his hand the key to the bottomless

pit in a great chain and he sees the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and

Satan and bound him for a thousand years and threw him into the pit and shut it and sealed

it over him so that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years

were ended.

After that, he must be released for a little while.

Then I saw thrones and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was also

committed.

Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for

the word of God and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received

the mark on their foreheads or their hands.

They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.

This is the first resurrection.

Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection.

For such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ

and they will reign with him for a thousand years.

And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will

come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog,

to gather them for battle.

Their number is like the sand of the sea and they marched up over the broad plain of the

earth and surrounded the camp of the saints in the beloved city.

But fire came down from heaven and consumed them and the devil who had deceived them was

thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and false prophet were and they

will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

All right, pretty straightforward passage.

No one's ever debated it ever.

So a couple of ground rules as we get started on this, right?

That ground rule that we need to remember is that eschatology is not indicative of salvation.

Okay?

Everybody agree on these ground rules.

So I'm going to present you four different views of eschatology, the end times, the millennium.

And there are Christians who hold to each of these four views and just because you don't

hold to the same one as the other one does not mean you're not a Christian.

And it does not mean you're not really saved and it does not make you a heretic.

Do we understand these ground rules, right?

You can hold to any of the four views and be an Orthodox Christian.

The other thing that we need to remember as we have this discussion is I'm going to be

painting with a very broad brush in terms of explaining these.

So I'm going to get into the details, but what I mean is no matter which view you're

talking about, there are probably 10 different branches within that view.

So I might say something like, all millennials believe this, and if you're an all millennial

and you don't believe that, that's okay.

I'm not saying that every all millennial has to believe that.

I'm just saying in general, this is what they generally believe.

Does that make sense to everybody?

So I don't want to misrepresent anybody's view.

That's the other thing I want to make clear.

I'm going to present this completely unbiased, right?

I'm going to give you the facts.

This is the Colombo method.

Y'all used to watch Colombo, right?

Everyone starts talking and he said, just the facts, ma'am.

Just give me the facts.

That's what I'm going to do.

I'm not trying to persuade you for one of these views.

Everybody get it?

Yeah?

I'm not trying to persuade you.

I'm not trying to convince you of a certain view.

I'm literally just going to give you the facts of what that view says about these verses

and let you decide which view you think is most biblical, all right?

We good?

And then at the end of this, we're all still going to be brothers and sisters in Christ,

and we're going to praise God together, amen?

Wow, not in amen.

That's indicative of this.

Amen, right?

Yeah?

Okay, we got a couple.

We got a couple.

Man, making me rethink this thing.

Yeah, all right, so let's get started.

Mazzon, do we have the first slide?

Is it going to be able to pull up?

Well, we thought it was.

All right, I guess the second slide.

So when you're talking about eschatology, the study of the last things, basically you

have four different views, but they will fall into two separate categories.

You have the millennium there in the middle, and obviously you have one category is going

to be the premillennial views of eschatology, and then there are going to be the post-millennial

view of eschatology.

And there are two for each one of these.

There are two premillennial views, and there are two post-millennial views.

Now something that I just want you to see what those four views are, we'll go to the

next slide.

You have dispensationalism, historic premillennialism, all-millennialism, and host-millennialism.

I will try to get through all that I, wow, it's already 7-0-7.

If you want these slides, I'd be happy to print them out for you, and you can have your

own copy.

These are the four views, and something I thought would be very helpful for you to see

next slide, Mazzan, is I thought it would be very interesting to show you eschatology

throughout church history, because one problem that everybody I think has today with eschatology

is people living in their time tend to think that their view of eschatology is the right

view and the only view, and it's always been that way.

But what you're going to notice about this is that each one of the four views of eschatology

has at some point been the predominant view in a certain era throughout church history.

So for instance, when you look at the first through the third century, HP does not stand

for Harry Potter, that is historic premillennialism.

That was the predominant view in the early church from the first century to the third

century.

Nearly every single Christian believed in historic premillennialism.

Then you get into the fourth century through the seventeenth century, and the overwhelming

majority of the church, the predominant view was amillennialism.

And actually if you look at the whole timeline of church history, amillennialism has been

the most popular view of eschatology throughout church history.

Then when you get into eighteenth and nineteenth century, you get into post-millennialism, which

took over as the predominant view.

And then of course in the twentieth century into the twenty-first century, dispensationalism

became the predominant view.

And it's actually hard to say which one is the predominant one today.

I would still say probably dispensationalism, but I think there are so many diverse views

of eschatology today.

It's very hard to say which one is the predominant one today.

But I do think it's interesting to note how each view kind of coincides with what was

happening in history at the time.

So for instance, like historic premillennialism, right?

Back one slide, Mazan.

Yep, thanks.

Let's just stay there for a second.

So if you think about the first through the third century, the church was under heavy

persecution, right?

I mean, there was the Roman persecution.

Christians were being hunted down and killed and martyred all the time.

And the church at the time viewed that as a great tribulation.

And so they believed that Jesus was going to allow the church to go through the tribulation

and that he would return after it.

And so they believed that based on the Bible, but they just looked around their own circumstances

and they saw how it was lining up.

I mean, kind of the same thing happened with amillennialism when you enter into the scholastic

in the medieval period of church history.

People, the church became more scholarly because we weren't being as persecuted as much.

So we could actually sit down and study the Bible.

And what happened is people started studying the genres of the different biblical books

at this time and realizing how important they were for understanding what was written in

them.

And so they looked at Revelation and they said, well, hey, this is apocalyptic literature,

which means it needs to be interpreted in a certain way.

And so they began to believe that the millennial was symbolic and metaphorical rather than literal.

And then what's really interesting is when you get into the 18th, 19th century with post

millennialism, what was going on 18th, 19th century, some big things in the world in history?

You might know.

Revolutionary wars, what else we had before that 18th century, big thing.

Revolutionary war.

Anybody else?

Little thing called the Enlightenment.

Yeah.

So you had the Enlightenment happen and then you also had the Great Awakening happening

in the Americas, right?

And so what was happening was all this great stuff was going on.

You had the Enlightenment, you had the Great Awakening, and it seemed like the world was

getting better.

And one of the hallmark characteristics of post millennialism is they believe that the

world will increasingly get better until the end and then Jesus will return after a golden

age of Christianity, which is really interesting how it lines up with the historical relevance

of what was going on.

And then dispensationalism, this is writing right after evolution was made a theory and

then you saw science take on a highly secular tone to itself.

And so the world, people viewed the world as increasingly going downhill.

And so dispensationalism, one of the main characteristics of dispensationalism is they

believe that the world will continue to get worse and worse until the very end where there

will be a rapture and a tribulation in the return of Jesus.

And so it's just really, I thought that would be helpful to kind of look at how Christians

have viewed eschatology throughout church history.

Is that helpful for y'all at all?

I think, yeah.

Again, one of the main things I just want you to see here is that every single one of the

views of eschatology has been the predominant view at some point in church history.

All right, so let's do a very, very general, very quick general overview of each of the

four and then we'll dig in deep.

Okay.

All right, so dispensationalism, it teaches that Jesus will rapture the church before

the tribulation and after the tribulation Jesus will throw Satan into the bottomless

pit next slide, Mazzan.

He will also resurrect all believers and establish his millennial kingdom on earth for a thousand

years.

And then after a thousand years, Satan is released to deceive the nations, assemble armies against

Christ and Christ will defeat them.

Yeah, ultimately defeated thrown in hell and then unbelievers are raised at that point

to go to the judgment throwing of God.

Now you might be saying, hey, there's probably more to it than that.

You're right, but this is the general part of our overview.

So next slide, Mazzan.

Historic premillennialism.

It's very similar to dispensationalism in that they both believe that Jesus will return

before the millennium.

They also believe in a literal 1000 year reign of Christ on earth.

Now let me just pause here and say some historic premillennialists believe the 1000 years is

symbolic or metaphorical, not an actual 1000 years and some of them believe in a literal

1000.

So there are multiple branches to this next slide.

And this the main difference between historic premillennialism and dispensationalism is that

historic premillennialism teaches that Jesus will allow the church to go through the tribulation.

All right.

Anybody know what all millennialism means?

In Greek, the letter A or the word awe is just a negation, so it literally means no

millennium or without a millennium.

And so it's a post millennial view technically because they see the millennium as a symbolic

period of time that represents Jesus's spiritual reign through his church.

Next slide, Mazzan.

Okay, there you go.

A 1000 year period is symbolic.

It doesn't refer to a literal 1000 years.

It refers to the entire time between Jesus's ascension and Jesus's return.

So if you're an awe millennial, you would say that we are in the millennium now technically

and it will end when Jesus returns.

And then you have post millennialism.

Obviously, this is a post millennial view and it claims that Jesus will return after

the millennium.

Now, the main characteristic of post millennialism is they believe that the world is getting

increasingly better all the time and will continue to get increasingly better until

Jesus returns.

They actually believe that what's going to happen is the church is going to spread the

gospel.

God is going to bless the gospel going out and this is going to give way to a golden age

of Christianity.

This golden age in post millennialism is also known as the millennium.

So basically the world is going to keep going like this and at some point the post millennials

teach that almost the entire world will be Christian at that point.

So there'll be all Christian nations, Christian rulers, Christian leaders, kings, queens, all

of it.

Everything is predominantly going to be Christian.

This is the golden age of Christianity and this leads to Jesus' return after that golden

age.

Now, it could be a literal thousand years, could be symbolic, there are post millennials

who believe, but next slide.

All right, let's get into the interpretations.

This is where we get into the weeds.

We're looking at dispensationalism tonight and I've got 10 minutes to tell you about

dispensationalism.

All right, so one of the key characteristics of dispensationalism is they operate with a

literal and chronological interpretation of revelation and actually this is applied for

their interpretation of most of the Bible.

They will almost always default to interpreting things literally.

So we just need to understand the framework that they're coming from here.

Another key characteristic of dispensationalism is they believe there's a hard distinction

between Israel and the church.

Basically that God has two separate peoples.

He has Israel, which are his national people, and he has the church, which are his spiritual

people.

Most dispensationalists would also say that the tribulation and the millennium do not have

anything to do with the church.

Instead, they believe that the entire point of the tribulation has to do with God's purposes

for Israel.

So in the dispensational thought, what's going to happen is there's going to be a rapture

and then the tribulation happens.

God's going to rapture up the church, but all unbelievers are going to be left.

And so this time of tribulation is going to be used for Israel.

And this is really based on Daniel's 70 weeks prophecy, which we talked about a little bit

in some of our earlier studies of Revelation.

So for instance, you remember Daniel prophesied about these 70 weeks that have to happen, right?

And dispensationalists, this is an interesting thing.

This is where they break with their literal interpretation.

So they understand the 70 weeks to refer to 490 years.

So each week represents seven years.

The first 69 weeks or 483 years, that occurs between the decree to rebuild the temple and

the coming of the Messiah.

After the 69 weeks, the Messiah is cut off in accordance with Daniel's prophecy in Daniel

Daniel 9 · chapter mention

chapter 9 of that one.

Go to the last slide, there we go.

So he's cut off and that refers to Jesus' crucifixion.

There we go, now he's on.

Yeah, yeah.

So you have the 69 weeks, it basically ends with Jesus' crucifixion when he is cut off.

But then there's a gap.

There's this huge gap between the 69th week and the 70th week.

There is still a one week that needs to be paid off or a seven year time period that

needs to be paid off.

And this 70th week is to be filled during the time of tribulation.

All right, everybody tracking?

There's 69 weeks that have already passed.

One week still needs to happen, which equals seven years.

And they say that this is what the purpose of the tribulation is.

It is a seven year time period in which Israel is paying off that week that they owe to God.

Next slide, Mazzon.

Yeah, that they owe to God.

And so this is going to be a time in which Israel is going to be prepared to receive

Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

When you look at verses one through three as a dispensationalist, they believe that this

occurs at or after or at the same time as the rapture.

So when it talks about Satan being bound, that's going to happen at the same time as

the rapture.

And they also claim that Jesus will secretly rapture Christians to heaven.

Now the reason that it is called a secret rapture is because, yeah, nobody knows when

it is.

Basically, it's secret in that people will be going about their everyday lives, right?

And then everybody just disappears if you're a believer in Jesus.

So in that way, it is secret.

No one knows the time.

And basically Christians are going to disappear and all the unbelievers who are left are going

to not really understand what happened.

But they believe that there's going to be Jesus is going to return partway to earth.

He's going to remain in the clouds.

He's going to secretly rapture his church to meet him in the clouds.

And then he is going to escort them back to heaven where they will remain during the seven

year tribulation so that they are not subjected to it here on earth.

Next slide, Ms. on.

Yeah, I did that one.

So let's go next.

All right.

So the other thing about dispensationalism is that they typically believe in two to three

resurrections based on how you read Revelation chapter 20.

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

The first resurrection is of the church and that happens at the time of the rapture.

That is when the church is going to be resurrected.

The second resurrection is after the tribulation at the second coming of Christ.

Typically dispensationalists will say this is the resurrection of the Old Testament saints.

So the first resurrection is the resurrection of all the church.

Everybody tracking here.

The second one after the tribulation is the resurrection of Old Testament saints.

And there will be a union of the church and the Old Testament saints to rule with Christ

for a thousand years on earth and his millennial kingdom.

The third resurrection is the resurrection of the wicked after the millennium.

After the rapture, the antichrist will rise to prominence and the earth will experience

that seven years of tribulation and that is going to be used to prepare Israel to receive

Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

Now the tribulation obviously climaxes with the battle of Armageddon and Jesus is going

to return back to earth to win the battle of Armageddon.

Israel's converted to faith and Jesus and Jesus raises all believers from the dead to

begin his thousand year reign.

Now next slide if you would Mazzan.

You might be wondering where does a lot of this come from?

Well one of the main places that this comes from is Romans chapter 11.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

The reason that dispensationalists believe that the tribulation is used to prepare Israel

to be converted to faith in Christ is based on Romans 11.

They believe there's going to be a mass conversion of the Jewish people.

So I'll read that passage for you just so you can see where this comes from.

So Romans 11 verses 25 to 27 says, lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you

Romans 11:25–27

to be unaware of this mystery brothers.

A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in and

in this way all Israel will be saved as it is written.

The deliverer will come from Zion.

He will banish ungodliness from Jacob and this will be my covenant with them when I

take away their sins.

And so based on passages like this they believe that there's going to be a mass conversion

of the Jews during the time of tribulation or at least when Jesus returns at the end

of the tribulation.

Let's pause here and again let's note that there are different branches of dispensationalism.

Some dispensationalists believe that every single Jewish person will be saved.

That is a small minority.

I believe the predominant view within dispensationalism is that exactly 144,000 Jewish people will

be saved based on earlier passages in Revelation.

So again you do get different branches within the same umbrella of eschatology.

But that is where they get this and their understanding of Revelation 20 verses 1 through

Revelation 20:1–10

10, it makes a lot of sense if the passage is to be interpreted literally.

So this is what I want everybody to understand.

Once you get in a framework and you set yourself within a system, when you operate within that

framework things tend to make sense.

So I know a lot of people are confused by dispensationalism.

They go well I don't believe that, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

It makes sense if you follow the rules of interpretation that they set up.

Does that, does that, everybody understand that?

Alright, so just look at the passage.

If you look at verses 1 through 3, it's the literal binding of Satan in the literal bottomless

pit.

Verse 4 refers to believers being raised from the dead to rule with Christ in his millennial

kingdom.

Verses 5 and 6 anticipates the resurrection of the rest of the dead before the final judgment.

Verse 7 refers to Satan being released to stage a rebellion.

And verses 8 through 10 refer to the final battle of Armageddon and the defeat of Satan,

the beast and the false prophet.

So you can look at all the different things and let me just say dispensationalism is the

most complex of all the different views of eschatology.

Amillennialism is the simplest.

Dispensationalism is the most complex and there are so many different things we could

say.

But I wanted to just give you the key takeaways of dispensationalism for you to remember this

by.

Next slide, Mazzon.

I'll print them all for you.

You can just reference them.

Go to the next one, Mazzon.

There it is.

So these are the key points I want you to take away from dispensationalism.

The hallmarks are a literal interpretation of the passage.

So if it says a thousand years, it literally means a thousand years.

There's a hard distinction between Israel and the church.

This is really only, actually it's really only part of dispensationalism.

None of the other three views of eschatology make a hard distinction between Israel and

the church.

Dispensationalism has the pre-tribulation rapture.

It is the only eschatological view that teaches a pre-tribulation rapture.

Next slide, Mazzon.

There is a literal seven-year period of tribulation on earth that is focused on divine purposes

for Israel.

There are anywhere from two to three resurrections, and there is a literal one thousand year earthly

kingdom where Jesus will rule and reign until the time when Satan is released, the final

battle of Armageddon, and the resurrection of unbelievers to the judgment thrown of God.

So that is dispensationalism in a nutshell.

We're not going to start another view tonight.

I will just say it gets a lot simpler from here.

So if you're like, okay, listen, that was a lot.

Yeah, it is.

We start with dispensationalism because it's the most complex, but each one after this

is going to become increasingly simpler with, again, Amillennialism being the simplest.

Pretty much if they can chalk it up to metaphor or symbolism, they're going to.

I want to open it up.

What kind of questions do you have?

Questions, comments, feedback about dispensationalism that I might try to answer?

Not that I have all the answers, but I'd be happy to see if I could take a crack at it.

I've not come across that view, but I don't doubt that it is a view.

Yeah, I haven't personally heard that one myself.

There is a reference at the end of Matthew where it talks about people being raised from

the dead, but I haven't come across the view that it was all the Old Testament saints at

that time who went with him.

So I'd look into that and I'll let you, I'll get back to you because I actually don't know.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

With him.

Yeah, I wouldn't say that applies to dispensationalism in general.

Everything that I've studied about dispensationalism typically puts the resurrection of Old Testament

saints at the end of the time of tribulation.

But there are, like I said, a ton of branches, so I don't doubt that that's possible.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

There's nothing that says that they ascended with him at that time.

It is possible that that happened, but we just don't know because the Bible doesn't say it.

It just says they came back to life at that time.

Don't really know what happened after that.

Sure, sure.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

I would say it probably doesn't relate to dispensationalism in particular, but if you wanted to get into that, there is a whole discussion about when unbelievers die, they don't immediately go to hell.

they go to this place of torment like you see the rich man go there. He's not in

hell. It's more like a Gehenna type situation where it's a place of torment

where he is awaiting the final judgment and the final sentencing to eternal fire

in hell. And then the place where Lazarus goes is called Abraham's

bosom. And so it's this place where he's in the presence of God but there's not

the fullness. And you see the same kind of idea in Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

5 where he talks about being absent from the body. We're at home with the Lord.

And then you look in Revelation chapter 6 and you see the saints under the

Revelation 6 · chapter mention

throne of God crying out to him, how long oh Lord. And so they are with Christ and

yet there's more that they're hoping for. And what they're hoping for is the

bodily resurrection I would argue. The final rejoining of soul and body and the

having received the glorified body that Christ promises his believers. So yeah

there's this whole idea of there being this place of comfort and this place of

torment that anticipates a final destination reality. But that's not,

that's not technically eschatology but I'm happy to talk on that. Yeah, yeah, good

point. Anybody have any questions specifically related to eschatology or

dispensationalism? Anything you want me to clarify?

Yes. Yeah and I didn't really touch on this. So let me just say this very

quickly. Dispensationalism is more popular in America than any other

country. That kind of has started to change with the material being sent to

other countries such as the left behind series and the books and the movies

because it's an easy way to put Jesus in front of people and that's a very

dispensational, it's all dispensational theology. But the really interesting

thing about dispensational theology is we noted that it didn't become popular

until the 20th century, right? You remember the timeline? It's because it

wasn't created until 1830 by Darby. Darby was the first person in church history

to clearly articulate dispensationalism and so there is no record or any

existing documents of anyone teaching dispensationalism before 1830 or the

idea of a pre-tribulation rapture. Darby was the one who looked into the

scriptures, looked in Revelation, looked in Daniel, he put forth this

interpretation. It became very popular especially with a man named C.I.

Scofield and in 1905, Scofield wrote the Scofield Bible which is a Bible that

has commentary footnotes as much like our study Bibles today but it is written

purely from a dispensational perspective and this Bible became one of the best

selling and most influential Bibles of the entire 20th century. Gene McKinney

still has one today. Michael, they're incredibly hard to even find today.

They don't really reproduce them as much but yeah, so dispensationalism didn't

exist before 1830. That's why it didn't become popular until the 1900s and then

once the Scofield Bible started getting produced and sent out to people, that's

where it really took off. The writer of left behind was highly influenced by

Scofield and Darby so he wrote these novels to try to put the idea of the

return of Christ in front of a popular audience, general audience to get them

thinking about that and then obviously you get the movies and then we've started

shipping that to other countries. So long way to answer your question, yes it's

more popular in America. In other places around the world you typically find

all millennialism is still the most popular among the the nations not

America with still historic premillennialism right behind that. Post

millennialism is really taking off in America too though. It's probably

becoming the second most popular eschatological view in recent years.

Any other questions? Alright well we've solved everything in one nice. We've

cleared up dispensationalism. My goal throughout this is I want to present

everybody's view in a way that if they hold to that view they would feel

comfortable saying yeah that accurately represents what I believe. I don't want

to misrepresent anyone's view so I'm going to do my best to present each view

just by the facts and as honest as I can. So again not trying to sway you. Next

week we'll get into historic premillennialism. Michael how about

closing us in prayer?