According to a recent poll of evangelical leaders, 65% are premillennial, holding to a belief in a literal, 1000 year reign of Christ on this earth, the millennium. Running a distant second are the amillennialists at 14% and postmillennialists at 4%. “Other” views rounded out the poll at 17%.
Is the millennial question something we should even bother with? Absolutely!
Dr. Siegbert W. Becker (Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary):
But is the millennial error really that serious? Yes, it is. Since according to millennialistic doctrine the millennium will take place before judgment day, the implication is that we really need not worry about the judgment day at all. We’ll have plenty of warning – at least a thousand years! This, however, totally violates what our Lord Jesus says in Luke 12 and 21: “Be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect Him….Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness, and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”
-Dr. Siegbert W. Becker (1914-1984), from the Foreword of his commentary, Revelation: The Distant Triumph Song, Northwestern Publishing House
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It is telling that both the Reformed Creeds and the Lutheran Augsburg Confession unequivocally denounce premillenialism, particularly the flavor we know today as dispensational premillenialism, as error.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head as to why this doctrine is of importance, and it is primarily to do with the final judgment.
There are so many reasons to reject pre-millennialism, and times that by a thousand for traditional dispensationalism, but ultimately they both diminish the immediate nature of both the judgment and the restoration of all things.
Not only that, have you ever even tried to explain from Scripture the role we will have as believers in this supposed earthly millennium? I know maybe that I put too much effort in convincing people of the errors of dispensationalism and premillennialism, but I honestly believe it somehow diminishes the Gospel message itself to a degree.
John.
I think there’s a least a THOUSAND reasons the pre-mil (especially the pre-trib version) is unbiblical