Premillennialism

Thomas Ice

Republished from Voice, Jan/Feb 2020.

While all fundamentalists have not been premillennial, the overwhelming majority have been. Premillennialism has been a historic staple of fundamentalism. It is often the case that when one abandons the fundamentals of the faith, they also abandon the premillennial hope. Why has that been the case in the past and why should it continue into the future, especially within the IFCA?

Post-Civil War Rise of Fundamentalism

Postmillennialism in America arose as the dominant eschatology in the 1720s as a result of the influence of theologians like Jonathan Edwards and dominated evangelicalism until a decade or two after the Civil War. Higher critical liberal scholarship began to cross the Atlantic and make progress in America by the 1880s, which lead to the rise of fundamentalism as a response by conservative evangelicals. “Dispensationalism, or dispensational premillennialism, was the fruit of renewed interest in the detail of biblical prophecy which developed after the Civil War,” observes George Marsden. “Rejecting the prevailing postmillennialism… dispensational premillennialists said that the churches and culture were declining and that Christians would see Christ’s kingdom only after he personally returned to rule in Jerusalem.”¹

Reposted courtesy of Proclaim & Defend.

In a Gospel Coalition article, Sam Storms has a piece entitled “Why I Changed My Mind on the Millennium.” He says that it is now impossible for him to hold to premillennialism, having now switched to an amillennial position.

As a response, I would like to share why I cannot change my mind on a premillennial position.

Storms finds it impossible to believe in the Millennial Kingdom of Jesus Christ on earth for 1,000 years for a number of reasons and concludes that “premillennialists must believe what the NT explicitly denies.” Major points that he insists that are a clear contradiction to NT teaching is that premillennialists must “believe that physical death will continue to exist beyond the time of Christ’s second coming.” He also insists that the “the New Heavens and the New Earth are introduced immediately following the parousia.”