"Postmillennialism, America, and the Kingdom of God" Sunday Evening Worship Service

There's a well-known hymn that I actually love to sing by Timothy Dwight, I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord.

You perhaps know the lyrics to it.

I love thy kingdom, Lord, the house of thine abode, the church, our blessed, redeemer saved, with his own precious blood.

Do you know the song?

It was written by, I mentioned Timothy Dwight.

He's the grandson of Jonathan Edwards.

The apple did not fall far from the tree, so to speak.

Dwight graduated Yale at age 17, valedictorian.

At age 17.

Jonathan Edwards, if you recall, graduated from Yale, valedictorian, age 14.

So the compromises just start.

You know, that's second generation.

What a weak sauce.

Jonathan Edwards gave his valedictorian address in Latin.

Timothy Dwight gave his in English.

Those grandkids, man.

Dwight graduated from Yale 1776.

Anything else happened that year?

In his valedictory address to the students, Dwight declared, quote, We have the best foundation to believe that this continent will be the principal seat of the new kingdom.

So part of that is just 17-year-old bluster, you know, 17-year-old valedictorian of Yale saying that God has uniquely set up this continent, America, to be the principal seat of the new kingdom.

You know, when you talk about Mormonism, believing that you know the new Jerusalem will be in Missouri, you wonder like, where does that, where in the world does that come from?

How can how can people be so ripe to believe that?

And when you go back to 1776, that kind of expectation was already kind of baked into America's founding.

Where it wasn't an obscure belief.

Many of the early American theologians believed that the United States would be the capital of the new kingdom.

Dwight was one.

So was Jonathan Edwards.

But to focus on Dwight and his speech there, he had more to say about it.

He said, as God established the kingdom of God in America, he would do so by the means of, and this is a quote from him, by the means of preaching and hearing the word, reading scripture, prayer, correspondence with religious men, religious meditation, and religious education of the children.

This would apply to everyone, regardless of their church affiliation or participation.

So that sounds, you can you can read that and kind of follow along, can't you?

That God is going to advance his kingdom in the world through the preaching of the word, through the study of the word, correspondence with the religious men.

I mean, that that's fine.

This is a pre-email world.

This is a world where you know books were rare and expensive, and so you had, you didn't have a study Bible.

You know, you have a question, you're writing letters, so that's kind of what he's talking about there.

It's another word, study of the word of God, religious education of children.

We're all in, right?

But then he says that it's not the means by which God is going to advance his kingdom.

Dwight's arguing it's the means by which God will establish his kingdom in this country, and he will do so with those tools, regardless of someone's own religious affiliation or participation.

What he means by that is that as the United States grows deeper and deeper into Christianity, they will basically make it mandatory that students are raised in the Christian faith.

That people will be hearing the Word of God and having it preached to them regardless of their own inclination.

After Dwight graduated from Yale, he enlisted in the military, became a military chaplain, served alongside George Washington, went up with Washington through his New York tour.

When he went up there, you know, around the time of the Battle of Ticonderoga, we talked a little about that last week.

Lemuel Haynes had been put in, uh captured.

He was the African-American guy who became a uh pastor of an all-white congregation up in New England.

So he was, remember, captured by the British, put in prison, busted out by George Washington's own troops.

Timothy Dwight was part of that mission and the education of Lemuel Haynes.

After his time serving in the military, he pastored and then he became the president of Yale, returned.

It's very interesting, Jonathan Edwards at the end of his life was done with Yale, washed his hands of it.

But his grandson came, had a longer view of history, became the president of it.

For Dwight, eschatology could not be separated from ecclesiology or soteriology.

In other words, eschatology, the study of the end times, was interconnected to the doctrine of the church.

He saw those two doctrines as almost synonymous.

They're very different doctrines for us, but he saw them linked in this way.

His view of the end times was that God was going to use the United States of America to establish the kingdom of God on earth.

He would do so through the church.

Beth Spaulding wrote a journal article for the United Methodist Church.

In it, she wrote that, quote, Dwight personified the theology of America.

I share that quote with you, just to let you know that he was not an outlier.

Dwight's idea that the church would establish the kingdom of God in the U.S.

was normative among his generation of American theologians.

Sometimes these people are called American Puritans.

They had this, and they're called Puritans because the Puritans in England were purifying the church.

They were calling true believers to either leave the denominations, leave the Church of England, and join together in a more conservative group.

Sometimes they were asking, calling for change within the denomination, within the Church of England, like Richard Sibbs, but they're called Puritans because they were pushing against government control of the church and against the government intervention and corruption of the church.

That's why they're Puritans.

They're in favor of a pure church.

In America, there was no government control of the church.

They were across an ocean from the King of England.

But they were kept this idea.

The church's role would be to purify society.

So they're sometimes referred to as the American Puritan.

Samuel Willard is a consummate example of this.

He was the pastor who he wrote a lot of theology.

His theology is very good.

It's, you know, um, it's exceptional.

But he was one of the pastors that was involved in the Salem witch trials.

And they're navigating through this how does the church and the government relate to each other?

And the government had this attitude that the church should do church stuff.

And the church had the attitude that the government should do government stuff and let us do, but what do you do now with witches?

And so when you read some of the transcripts of the court trials, of the Salem Witch trials, which are widely available.

I mean, you can Google them, not now, but on your own time.

It's really fascinating.

I mean, you get this attitude from the judges that the judges are looking at the people accused of being witches and are asking, like, what do we do with these people?

So they ask the pastors, pastors, what does the Bible say you're supposed to do with a witch?

It's like a Monty Python skit.

And the pastors are saying, well, it's the Old Testament says it's the death penalty, and the judges are saying, Well, how do we know who a witch is?

Can you tell us if they're a witch, kind of attitude?

It's such a different world, isn't it?

Now, could you imagine getting, as a pastor, your phone ringing and it's a judge down in the Fairfax courthouse?

We have somebody accused of blasphemy.

Can you tell us what we should do with them?

This was the theology of those America's founding fathers, the American Puritans.

And they believed through this kind of cooperation with the government that the kingdom of God would be established in the United States.

And this was, as Beth Spaulding called it, a uniquely American theology.

What made postmillennialism so uniquely American?

Well, it requires a few ingredients to have.

First, it requires this idea that your nation is in covenant with God.

Postmillennialism requires the idea that your nation is in a covenantal relationship with God.

That's very hard to do if your nation has been around a thousand years and you need the Puritans.

But a lot of America's founders had that attitude with them, that they were setting out to establish the kingdom of God, a new experiment.

We still do this, we still use that same kind of language.

President Biden, in his speech this week about the election, used that same language that comes from 1776.

The American experience is an experiment of vision.

That's baked into American DNA.

That's required to have postmillennialism, that we're doing something new here.

And what we're doing something new with is having a nation that is in covenantal relationship with God.

Secondly, postmillennialism requires this distinction between regenerate and unregenerate people in the church.

This was not a distinction that was common in Europe.

It's not a distinction common in the Presbyterian world or the Omillennialist world.

You would think infant baptism gets rid of that.

In infant baptism, there's the visible church is made up of regenerate and unregenerated alike.

But in the United States, you start to see some of these early American Puritans distinguishing between the regenerate and the unregenerate in the church.

This is why Jonathan Edwards got into so much trouble, eventually getting fired from his church, if you recall.

He eventually insisted that only regenerate people could take communion.

Very low bar.

You want to come to the Lord's table, you need to be regenerate.

You know, in England, they had this idea if you were under public discipline, you couldn't take communion.

But other than that, there was no, you know, Calvin fences the table from people that had been disciplined out of the church, but there was no idea that you had to be demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit or anything like that to take communion.

In the U.S., Jonathan Edwards went hard after that.

He was fencing the table, saying there is a difference between regenerate and unregenerate people, and the kingdom of God, the church, is for the regenerate.

It's a distinction that was largely American.

It really only makes sense in a post-parish world.

You're looking through London and England at this time, everything was parish-related.

Like you were under the authority of whatever priest had oversight of your neighborhood.

The parish system, even the Church of England kept that.

But the United States didn't have that.

This kind of postmillennialism also required this idea that the church was the spiritual backbone of society, but that it was narrow.

There were few who would find it.

It's a narrow path.

Not the wide path that the world is on that's lost.

It's a narrow path for the regenerate people.

Nevertheless, it's the spiritual backbone of society.

And when the church is strong, society will be strong.

When the church is preaching a strong message, it will sanctify society.

That's all early American theology.

And you probably can hear echoes of that even in our own speaking today, can't you?

We just had an election recently, I hear.

And you have that same kind of attitude.

People say it all the time.

Things that are taken for granted.

If the church would stand up and be the church, we could take our country back.

Have you heard that kind of talk?

And it sounds persuasive when somebody says it, doesn't it?

If only the church should be the church, we could get our country back.

You can just pause and do a little bit of math on that.

Is the church the majority?

No.

Is democracy the rule of the majority?

Yes.

So what's required then for the church to stand up and start winning elections?

It's an inherent contradiction.

But it's a contradiction that is baked into the founding DNA of the United States.

I'll explain why.

Christian nationalism gives root to this and post-millennialism gives root to this as we go we go on tonight.

But this is what Timothy Dwight understood when he's writing his hymn, I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord.

It's a hymn that is duly about the United States and about the advancement of the church, the house of thine abode.

The church, our blessed Redeemer, saved with his own precious blood.

But for Dwight, the kingdom there is the founding in the United States.

Dwight wrote his own hymnal for his church, and he paired in his hymn, I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord, with Psalm 137.

Psalm 137, which he also put to music, was supposed to be sung, and then I love thy kingdom, Lord.

Now you might not know Psalm 137 on top of your head.

It's a more obscure psalm, but it is, maybe you'll recognize it.

It's the by the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept.

I hung my harp on the tree and I hung my head in my hands and I cried my eyes out because how can I sing of God's people and God's temple in a foreign land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my tongue forget its own mouth.

That's Psalm 137.

Not a happy Psalm.

We don't sing it anymore.

But the gist of Psalm 137 is we're in Babylon.

How hard it is to sing of God in Babylon.

How do you pair that with I love thy kingdom, Lord, the house of thine abode?

How do you pair?

How can the church, let me put it this way, how can the church be both the new Jerusalem and in Babylon?

How can the church be the headquarters of God's kingdom and in Babylon?

That's that inherent contradiction.

That's in really the founding of the United States.

And it remains to this day.

It captures the nature of American Christianity as well as postmillennialism.

This idea of the church would rise up and finally do something about the decay of society, we could win it all back.

That attitude gives birth and over time will grow into what we now call postmillennialism or Christian nationalism.

I'm using those two phrases relatively synonymously, although I know there are some Christian nationalists that would reject postmillennialism, and I would say it's because they haven't thought through their own position seriously enough.

And I'm sure there's some postmillennialists that would reject the label Christian nationalism, but by and large, there's overlap between the two to the point where they're almost synonymous.

So I want to walk you through postmillennialism tonight.

I have three points.

The first two points I'm gonna say positively, so I'm gonna explain postmillennialism to you as if I am postmillennial.

I'm gonna try to give an explanation of it in a way that somebody who is postmillennial would listen to it and go say yes, that's what we're saying.

Yes, that's what I'm after.

I'm not going to be postmillennial.

The third point is where we'll undo it.

So don't throw rocks at me until the third point.

All right, the first point.

Postmillennialism begins with a new hope, which is the gospel.

A new hope, which is the gospel.

This is really the heart of postmillennialism, that people, by their nations, are in a covenantal relationship with God, and that covenantal relationship with God is national, and it has the gospel embedded in it.

You can go back to the garden where God tells Adam and Eve they can eat of the tree of life and live forever and ever and ever.

As long as they don't eat the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they get the curses of that covenant, they are now going to die.

The tree of life is withheld.

That's kind of the first covenantal promise that is given to people that there's no nations in the earth then, just Adam and Eve.

And so God enters into covenant with all people that if they obey him, they will have life.

That's the argument behind Genesis 1 and 2, and even the curse in Genesis 3.

They broke the terms of the covenant.

They now get the curse of the covenant, which is their own death.

They then scatter, of course.

Cain sent off to another city to live, he'll found a new city, he'll roam the earth like a voyager.

The people grow, and there's violence until the flood, the flood wipes everybody out.

Now they start again, and this time they divide into nations.

Between the end of the flood and Abraham in Genesis 12 is the growth of nations.

Genesis 10 and 11 is the table of nations.

It describes the Tower of Babel.

It shows you how nations and languages came about.

There's no real gospel in those except the rainbow at the end of the flood.

There's a promise of governments in Genesis 8 and 9, that governments will bear the sword and check evil.

But there's no almost gospel promise except God's not going to flood you again, which, you know, it's not that much of a good news because God has lots of other ways to kill people.

But then nations come around.

And then God in Genesis 12 tells Abram that he will bless him, and he will bless not the earth through Abram, but he will bless the nations through Abram.

The promise goes to Abram's seed, which will be Christ.

The promise that through the Israelite people, through the Jewish people, eventually the Savior will come, and the nations will be blessed through that Savior.

Nevertheless, the nations now are incorporated into this covenantal promise that God is still going to work with people according to their works.

He'll save them by grace, he'll punish them by their works, and he's drafting in the nations to those covenants through Genesis 12 by saying, Through you, Abram, the nations will be blessed.

Or those who honor you and bless you, they themselves will be blessed.

This is repeated throughout the Old Testament.

I'm not going to go through all the verses where it's seen, but another key one is 1 Kings chapter 8.

1 Kings 8 · chapter mention

This is Solomon's prayer of dedication in the temple.

And Solomon, in his dedication in the temple, says, If a foreigner hears the good news and calls on Yahweh's name, God will hear them and deliver them.

And then in 1 Kings 8 43, it doesn't just, not just generically, like if some Amalekite or some Assyrian or some Babylonian calls on your name, they'll be saved, but it becomes more national.

1 Kings 8 verse 43, when a foreigner calls on you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you.

1 Kings 8:43

So there's this nationalistic idea in there that God will hear their prayer.

The idea is that the promise that is given to Abraham, to David, now amplified by Solomon through the dedication of the temple, is a promise for the nations.

The nations will in hope and faith turn to the covenant given to Abraham.

Those nations won't take Israel's place, but they will join the covenant corporately as nations.

There's other passages about that in the Old Testament.

But for the sake of time, the New Testament, Luke 13, and if there was one passage you wanted to flip through, Luke 13 would be a good one to go to, because that is either the most or the second most significant passage for postmillennialism.

Just like if, you know, people say premillennialism is based entirely in Revelation 20, which it's not.

Revelation 20 is just like the cherry on top of the premillennialist Sunday.

Luke 13 would be the same place in postmillennialism.

Luke 13, verses 18 and 19 really are the key verses inside of postmillennialism.

Luke 13:18

It's Jesus telling a parable, and he says, What is the kingdom of God like?

To what shall I compare it?

It's like a grain of mustard seed that a man took, sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in his branches.

Birds of the air represent the nations of the earth.

That imagery comes from Ezekiel 17, Ezekiel 21, even in Daniel chapter 4.

Daniel 4 · chapter mention

Jesus is familiar with that imagery.

He drafts it in, so to speak.

He's speaking of the gospel as a seed that falls.

Jesus himself will fall and die, and he'll resurrect, using language from 1 Corinthians 15, that a seed must die before it gives birth to the tree.

Jesus will die before he gives birth to the gospel.

The gospel now grows in the world and it will grow.

Think of how a tree grows.

It doesn't grow in three days, it grows slowly and gradually over time.

You don't look at a tree today and then look at it tomorrow and go, it grew overnight.

But you can look at it season by season, year by year, and see gradual growth over time.

And the idea here in Luke 13 is that the nations will then be drawn to this tree.

The nations will rest in the tree.

So as the gospel grows forward in the world, eventually the nations will come and find rest and salvation through the good news of Jesus Christ.

That is pair.

Then with the Great Commission, Matthew 28, just left a few uh pages.

Matthew 28, the end of Matthew's gospel, the Great Commission.

This is the other key significant verse inside of post-millennialism.

Verse 18: all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

That word authority there is kind of a government language that the authority of the nations given to Jesus Christ.

Go therefore, verse 19, make disciples of all nations.

And perhaps you haven't noticed that word before.

You know, when we talk about the Great Commission, it's to motivate personal evangelism, it's to motivate missionary work.

All we do is evangelistic, of course.

It's, you know, we seek, serve, and share, is our mission statement of the church.

But in postmillennialism, that word nations is the key verse.

And it's the Greek word ethnos, which is the word for ethnicity or word nation.

It's not the word for, there's a different Greek word, Laos, which is, you know, different people.

It's not that word.

So in postmillennialism, you take Luke 13, the nations are going to come to the gospel.

How's that going to happen?

Well, it's fueled through the Great Commission.

What's the object of the Great Commission in postmillennialism?

It's the discipleship of the nations.

Not just the people, but the actual nations themselves.

What does it look like to disciple a nation?

It looks like cultural influence.

For example, Tim Keller, one of the most well-known post-millennialists of recent years, got all kinds of grief at his church because they had all this focus on artistic outreach, on you know, the sidewalk artists and ministry.

Because their goal is overtly to disciple the nations through discipling the culture.

You know, so if you don't have a post-millennial background, you're watching like Tim Keller's church and you're seeing like ballet on the stage, and you're going, oh my goodness, why is there a ballet at church?

Like I'm barely okay with the drama.

But when you step into ballet, put some pants on, man.

It's just so weird to us.

But if your starting point here is that the role of the church is to disciple the culture of the place.

Culture is could be defined as the arts and the laws, the government.

In the postmillennial world, that's what you're doing.

You're after those things.

You're making disciples of the nations.

Now, certainly that's going to involve government.

If you're truly discipling a nation, that's going to look like discipling the government.

Which leads to, my second point, the empire strikes back.

If your goal is to truly disciple a nation, eventually that discipleship is going to have to have a practical outworking in the government.

So in the post-ascension time, which we'll go ahead and call the church age, it's worth asking how does the gospel take root in the world and how do nations come to rest in the shade of Christ?

How you answer that question is going to determine in this system here if you're all millennial or post-millennial.

Now, hopefully you won't answer either, remember, we're premillennial, but for the sake of the discussion tonight, if you believe that the nations are going to come into the shade of the tree there and that the Great Commission is to disciple the nations, how does that take place?

One possible answer is that takes place family by family, as children are baptized into the covenant, family by family, missionary work around the world, as families come to the gospel, they'll always be persecuted on the narrow road.

But discipleship is taking place in all the nations to the family.

That's going to lead you to all millennialism.

But if your answer is that the nations are discipled through the cultural rejuvenation, Christian influence in the culture that starts to change the arts and the music and the movies and the literature, and Christian influence in the legal system, they start to pass Christian laws and legislate from a Christian perspective, that's post-millennialism.

In other words, the reason it's post-millennial is because of the government discipleship, it's going to produce kingdom-like attitudes, kingdom-like effects in society.

When a nation is truly discipled, it would be a Christian nation.

And a Christian nation is also called the kingdom of God.

Hence postmillennial.

Sometimes people wrongly describe postmillennialism as the church establishing the kingdom of God through its own strength and works.

And that's not, I haven't read any postmillennialists that talks like that.

Postmillennialists instead say it's God who establishes his kingdom on earth through the working of the church.

We understand that when it comes to salvation, we would say, you know, it's not our evangelism that saves people.

God saves people, but he saves them through our evangelism.

That's postmillennialism on a government scale.

God establishes his kingdom.

It's not the church that establishes it, it's God that establishes it through the influence of the church, Christianizing legislators and Christianizing leaders, politicians.

Transforming the culture from the inside out, making God's kingdom on earth, making disciples of the nation.

Legislation that matches biblical ethics and turns the kingdoms of men into the kingdoms of Christ.

Omillennialism has a dark outlook.

The church will be small and persecuted.

Postmillennialism has an optimistic outlook.

The church will be triumphant and expansive.

The church will always grow until eventually the kingdom of God.

And it won't be just that it's uniquely in the United States, that the United States alone is the kingdom of God on earth.

No, through the effects of American exceptionalism and all that, and missionaries that are sent around, the United States will have a kingdom-like attitude towards it, but so hopefully will other nations.

Would that the whole world, all the birds of the world, come to the tree of the gospel.

One postmillennial author, Marcelius Kick, writes, quote, The post-millennialist looks for fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies of a glorious age of the church upon this earth, through the preaching of the gospel by the power of the Spirit, and he looks to all the nations becoming Christian and living in peace with one another.

If all the nations are discipled, then there certainly won't be any more wars.

And this explains why this is very much an American view.

This idea that through our influence and the founding of our country and our might and our strength and our Christian experiment that we can bring peace to the world.

This is why probably the first the only seminary in the first seminary in world history that I know of that actually adopted postmillennialism was Princeton in their statement of faith and everything.

An American seminary.

It is very much an American-originated outlook.

And you really need to embrace in the post-millennial world these two contradictory truths.

So the church is narrow, it's the gospel, it's in Babylon, but through its preaching, it's going to transform the nations it's in, establish righteous laws, and usher in the victory of Jesus.

And when I say usher in, again, I'm not saying the church through its work will produce the kingdom, but it's God through the church that will usher in the kingdom of God in its nations.

Kim Rittelbagger writes, quote, in this era of world history, the entire world will progressively be subdued by Christ to the church's preaching with a near universal acceptance of the gospel as the outcome.

This, of course, is cultural transformation, arts, businesses, and certainly laws.

Another postmillennialist, Lorraine Butner, writes, quote, evil in all its forms will eventually be reduced to negligible proportions.

Christian principles will be the rule and not the exception, and Christ will return to find a Christianized world.

That's postmillennialism.

It's victorious, it's positive.

Many postmillennial authors are clear that the kingdom of God or the thousand-year reign of described in Revelation 20 exists as a time period from the first Advent all the way to the second.

Other postmillennial authors say, no, it's gonna, the thousand years kind of starts when a nation grows Christian roots.

Most American postmillennialists have that second view, which is distinctly theonomic, like Christian-based laws that the government should legislate Christianity.

And when I say government legislative Christianity, I don't mean that the government, you know, makes you become a Christian or they kill you or something.

I mean actually embrace Christian ethics and legislate from a Christian perspective, passing Christian laws.

That would be the discipleship of the nations.

That would be the goal.

In post-millennialism, that's the goal.

And remember, the foundation of this is the idea that God is in a unique covenant with that nation through the gospel.

And like I said, that is embedded in American evangelical culture.

And I can prove it to you.

How about this?

Some election time, have you ever quoted 2 Chronicles 7.14?

If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear in heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land.

That is like a quintessentially quoted passage around election times, isn't it?

I wanted to delay to preach this message until after the election, so nobody thought I was like, you know, secretly messaging you about the election.

No, that was already happened.

In California, you can probably still vote, but in other states the voting is over.

Everybody always says that verse.

If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, so go vote this way.

You think, woo, woo, woo, that's not what David, that's not 2 Chronicles 7.

Like, I understand how Israel, if they were to humble themselves, God would look at them nationally and forgive them of their sins, their faith in Christ.

How does that become a promise to the United States of America?

Like, how many people need to humble themselves and confess their sins before the election goes a certain way?

And remember how elections work, it's the majority.

Does that mean the majority of people need to be converted for Christians to win the election?

Like, is that what 2 Chronicles 7 is talking about?

Like at some point you just run into the point, like we're a church, like what are you supposed to do?

Go vote harder?

Press the button harder?

It is a very odd outlook when you think about it.

But if you step back and say, our nation from its founding is in a covenantal relationship with God.

Therefore, if we seek the Lord, our government will go according to covenantal blessings, then it starts to make more sense.

And that is very much embedded in the United States of America.

It's as apple, this is as American as apple pie in the Antichrist.

In fact, Jonathan Edwards wrote a book called The Brief History of Redemption.

It's not brief.

Where he traces church history from the cross, which he says is the start of the kingdom, start of the millennium, all the way through his own life.

And he argues in there that before the kingdom of God explodes in the earth, there will be a spiritually dark period of time.

I tell you that because a lot of people say that postmillennialism went away after World War II.

Like if the idea is that the church would Christianize the nations and make nations better, I mean, the most Christianized nations in the world in the early 1900s were all in Europe and they didn't cease wars like they blew each other up.

The Holocaust comes out of this.

I mean, so that kind of put to death postmillennialism for a while.

But understand in the postmillennial worldview, there's going to be darkness before the light of the gospel breaks through.

It just takes a few generations.

And that's why you really do start to see a return to postmillennialism now.

It's probably the fastest-growing eschatological view in the American church right now.

So many people are buying into it because of its optimism.

And really, I would say there's a one-to-one correlation here between the COVID closures and postmillennialism.

The government steps in, closes churches, does all the crazy government things that they did, and there's a certain response, especially with the younger generation of people, that looks at this and goes, This is not what government should be doing.

And they discover postmillennialism.

They say, This isn't right.

We have to take the government back.

And the whole, you know, be neutral on politics thing of the previous generation was not getting it done.

So you have a younger generation, you can recognize them by their beards and their microbrews.

I just a little bit, but it's a younger generation of people that has had it and says it's time for the church to get active and forget get active and vote a certain way.

We're talking get active and pass Christian laws.

They look around at a world with a government that closes churches, gay flags and schools, ridiculous taxation, comical biased enforcement of laws, up and down.

And they think if only we could take the government back.

So come on, church, let's vote to return Christian ethics to government.

Then the government can enforce biblical ethics in a way that would be way better than we have now.

That becomes post-millennialism, Christian nationalism.

Now, the specifics of what kind of laws should be passed to make it a Christian kingdom are where the wheels start to come off the car.

Because maybe you're listening to this and you're like, that does that sounds good to me.

Let's do it.

Let's go march on DC.

Well, no, let's not do that.

What laws should we pass?

Let's say that 51 senators get soundly converted and baptized and become members of Emmanuel Bible Church, and they ask us, what laws should we pass starting tomorrow to bring back the kingdom of God?

We've humbled ourselves, we've called the name of the Lord, we won the House, we won the Senate.

What laws should we pass?

And that's where things get murky very, very fast.

The most common answer is Sabbath laws.

Return to closing businesses on Sunday.

And you think, and you promised me the kingdom and you gave me Chick-fil-A.

Which I love Chick-fil-A, but no.

The truth is it becomes very hard for the Empire to actually strike back, which leads to the third point the return of the Jedi.

The truth is the way the scripture describes the kingdom cannot come to fruition until Jesus actually returns.

Because it's Jesus who establishes the kingdom, not the church's own work.

It's Jesus who sets these things up.

The lure of postmillennialism is that it's fun, it's triumphant, it's victorious, it's called an eschatology of hope and victory for a reason.

That's what it offers, that's what it promises.

But 2,000 and some odd years into this great church expanding around the world, it's worth calling a time out and asking: has postmillennialism vindicated itself?

You know, the strongest post-millennialists, the two most well-known post-millennialists in the world today, Tim Keller, who of course died recently, and you think, did that transform the culture of Manhattan?

Like, was it effective?

And Douglas Wilson, Moscow, Idaho, rural Idaho.

You know, they went all in on a school board election last year and didn't get their candidates elected.

And you think this is the most steadfast postmillennial group in the country in a small town, Moscow, Red Idaho, and they can't win the school board election.

What hope is there for us?

Eventually you see how if you embrace post-millennialism, it actually leads to discouragement more than encouragement.

You can only sell people an eschatology of hope and taking over the country for so long before you get frustrated and you think, you know, if this is true, shouldn't it be more effective than it is?

It's not, I mean, I get that trees take a long time to grow.

I get that.

But at some point, it's probably worth asking.

Has has anyone ever grown one?

What did it look like?

Where did where was it?

Now, there's a couple biblical reasons that I would say reject post-millennialism.

I'll give you three of them real quick.

They were not on the screen, so I'll just rattle them off.

You can write them down if you want or treasure them in your heart like Mary.

The first is that in Revelation 20, the kingdom comes after Jesus returns, not before it.

The kingdom comes after the resurrection of the dead, not before it.

So just the basic chronology.

We read Revelation 20 earlier tonight.

The basic chronology of the thing is letting you know why postmillennialism is wrong.

Jesus comes back first, then the kingdom.

So what does the postmillennialist do with that?

The same thing the all-millennialists does is they look at Revelation 20 and they say, oh, the resurrection is regeneration.

That speaks of people getting saved.

That's the first resurrection, is your regeneration.

And then that leads to the kingdom.

But when you look at Revelation 20, it is not talking about regeneration.

It's talking about those who are beheaded for their testimony of Jesus Christ.

That doesn't come before regeneration.

So the first reason to reject postmillennialism doesn't match Revelation 20.

The second reason to reject Revelation, uh, postmillennialism is that the kind of changes they describe are not described in the Bible.

The idea of the church taking over growing influences in government and in culture and in society is not described in the New Testament.

The New Testament describes the church with a different kind of imagery: sojourners, aliens, pilgrims, exiles, strangers.

That's the kind of language the New Testament.

Slaves, do los.

That's the kind of language the New Testament used to describe Christians.

Which does not fit with the Christian nationalistic perspective or ethos at all.

We're narrow, not wide.

Now you understand in politics you have to have a majority to win election.

This is why politicians make collaborations with people.

You know, you want to win an election, you're gonna have to partner with the Mormons, or you're gonna have to partner with the Catholics.

Of course you are.

You want to in Fairfax County, you want to win a zoning verdict from the Fairfax County Board of Commissioners, you're gonna have to partner with the Muslims.

That's how this is gonna work.

You can see why the mission of the church has to be more narrow than political advancement.

It's one thing to partner with the Muslims to get the gay flags out of schools, it's another thing to partner with the Muslims in the mission of the church.

Thirdly, so my my three points here that postmillennialism should be rejected because it doesn't match Revelation 20.

The kind of changes that they describe are not described in the Bible.

And thirdly, when the Bible describes Jesus' return, it describes it differently.

Jesus' return in the Bible is also described very differently than postmillennialism.

Matthew 19, verse 28.

Matthew 19:28

Truly I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

So here Jesus is describing his kingdom.

The sitting on the throne matches Revelation 20.

He's describing his kingdom when he's going to reign over the nations.

And then he says, everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or fathers, or mother or children, or lands for my sake will be rewarded in that kingdom.

So Jesus is describing his return, and the people that ushered in his return had left lands, had left families.

In other words, they faced persecution to the extent they lost their stuff.

That does not sound like a Christianized kingdom.

Think of Luke 18, the story of the unrighteous judge.

Remember, the widow is persistent, and finally the judge caves and then gives her, and Jesus says God is, you know, in a sense, not like that.

God is quick to give justice.

God hears prayers all the time.

God loves to answer prayers and he loves to give justice.

That's what God does.

Nevertheless, Luke 18, verse 8, when the Son of Man comes, will he even find faith on earth?

Luke 18:8

Jesus, for 2,000 years, has answered prayers and enforced justice, but when he comes, is he gonna find faith on earth?

And the implied answer in Luke 18 is no, he's not.

It'll be like the days of Noah.

How many got saved in the days of Noah?

Eight?

That's what he's gonna find on earth.

Not Christian nations.

So few.

Matthew 24.

The Olivet Discourse, Jesus says, you're gonna hear of wars and rumors of wars.

Don't be alarmed, because that must take place, but the end is not yet.

Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, there will be famines and earthquakes in the places.

Those are the beginning of birth pangs.

Then they'll deliver you to tribulation, then they'll put you to death, then you'll be hated by all nations for my name's sake.

Immediately after the tribulation, the sun will be dark, the moon will be dark, the stars will fall, the powers of heaven will be shaken, then the Son of Man will appear, the tribes on the earth will mourn, they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

That does not match postmillennialism.

That's describing wars increasing.

Postmillennialism is describing wars decreasing.

That's describing nations hating Christians, not nations becoming Christians.

All the tribes of the earth will mourn when they see Jesus, not say, welcome back, our King.

All the descriptions of the kingdom in the scripture, and there are a lot, cannot be brought about by government or cultural renovation.

There's no denying the main point of post-millennialism that the gospel describes a time of massive joy and rebirth and prosperity on the earth.

Conditions better than they are now, longer life, better government, all that.

The gospel describes all of that coming, but it describes all that coming in the kingdom.

All the things the post-millennialist says are good are good, and they are true, and they will happen.

But they require the Lord to return to bring them about.

Instead of global peace through gospel triumph envisioned in the Bible, the New Testament describes a church that is persecuted all the way through to the return of Christ.

So, what are believers supposed to do?

Well, they're supposed to stand for righteousness.

They're supposed to call people to repent of their sins.

They're supposed to, you know, as far as voting goes, and many of you work in government, you know, pursue morality and advocate for the victims and the defenseless and the unborn and take stands for righteousness in whatever opportunities the Lord gives you, and trust the Lord will open up the right doors and give you the strength to walk through them, tempering them with the hope that this world is not our home.

We won't ultimately build a Christian kingdom here.

All we can do is be salt and light for the amount of time the Lord gives us, longing for his return.

God, we're grateful that you have called us to be strangers, aliens, pilgrims, sojourners.

Because it causes us to long for your second coming.

We do pray that you return to earth quickly.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, DC area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.