Premillennialism

The doctrine that the Second Advent precedes the millennium; this in contrast both to postmillennialism, which teaches that the Advent follows the millennium, and to amillennialism, which makes the “thousand years” a mere figurative expression, referring either to Christ’s kingdom in this age or to no specific time at all. Seventh-day Adventists are premillennialists in the literal original sense of holding that the Advent precedes the millennium, but not in the sense in which the term is now commonly understood, as explained below. I. Two Schools of Premillennialism in the Nineteenth Century. The early nineteenth-century British premillennialists were called “Literalists” in contrast to the then-dominant postmillennialists, who “spiritualized” the millennial reign of Christ into the triumph of the church and the gospel (also of righteousness and social betterment) in this world. In America the “Adventists” (or “Millerites”) regarded the Old World Literalists as brethren in “the cause of the Second Advent near,” and as “doing a great and good work, in vindicating the coming of the Lord at hand” (see SB , No. 894 ) in a common protest against the postmillennialist view that put the Advent a thousand, if not 365,000, years in the future. It was for this message of the “Advent near,” and not for their teachings about the events connected with the Advent, that these Literalists—such as Irving, Wolff, and Lacunza—have been referred to as giving “the advent message” (see, for example, GC 359–363). But apart from this, between the Adventists and the other premillennialists lay a great gulf that was not apparent at first ( SB , Nos. 894 , 896 , 1085 ). The two groups differed sharply as to how the prophecies relating to the Second Advent were to be fulfilled in history: 1. Literalists. The literalist type of premillennialists expected Christ to set up on a partly renovated earth a millennial kingdom, a literal kingdom in which the OT prophecies concerning Israel would be fulfilled to the literal Jews as God’s chosen people and as the rulers and evangelizers of the nations. In this kingdom the probation of most of the world would continue; sin and death would exist, though held in check under the “iron-rod” rule of Christ; and rebellion would finally break out at the end of the period. (There were and are differences in details, among the premillennialists of the literalist type, as to the relation between the Jews and the redeemed and between the immortalized saints and the inhabitants of the earthly kingdom.) These doctrines have since developed and proliferated into the present-day futurist and dispensationalist systems. 2. Adventists (the Millerites). William Miller and his colleagues rejected the “temporal” and “Judaizing” aspects of the literalist millennium. The contrast is clearly outlined by Josiah Litch, a leading Millerite writer, in the following extract. After distinguishing the Adventists from the postmillennialists, who “believe in the universal spiritual reign of Christ a thousand years, before his second personal advent,” he separates them from the Literalist premillennialists, whom he calls Millennarians ( sic ): “The Millennarians believe in the premillennial advent of Christ, and his personal reign for a thousand years before the consummation or end of the present world, . . . while the Adventists believe the end of the world or age, the destruction of the wicked, the dissolution of the earth, the renovation of nature, and the descent of the New Jerusalem, will be at the beginning of the thousand years. The Millennarians believe in the return of the Jews, as such, either before, at, or after the advent of Christ, to Palestine, to possess that land a thousand years, while the Adventists believe that . . . Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with all their natural seed who have been of the faith of Abraham, together with all pious Gentiles, will stand up together, to enjoy an eternal inheritance, instead of possessing Canaan for a thousand years. “The Millennarians believe a part of the heathen world will be left on the earth, to multiply and increase, during the one thousand years, and to be converted and governed by the glorified saints during that period, while the Adventists believe that when the Son of Man shall come in his glory, . . . one part will go away into everlasting (eternal) punishment, but the righteous into life eternal. They [the Adventists] cannot see any probation for any nation, either Jew or Gentile, after the Son of Man comes in his glory, and takes out his own saints from among all nations” ([Josiah Litch], “The Rise and Progress of Adventism,” The Advent Shield and Review 1:47, 48, May 1844; reprinted in SB , No. 1085 ). What set off the Millerites from all their contemporaries was not date setting, for others also set dates (some even looked to 1843, 1844, or 1847); it was the Millerites’ expectation that the Second Advent would bring “the end of the world” and leave only the glorified saints alive. The other premillennialists (as did the postmillennialists) expected a continuation of probation, of sin, of mortality, throughout the millennium. That basic cleavage was continued and even increased in the difference between the SDA s (who are heirs of the Millerites) and the present descendants of the nineteenth-century Literalists—the modern interdenominational premillennialists, whose teachings have become overwhelmingly futurist and largely dispensationalist (see definition of terms below). II. Modern Classes of Premillennialism. The earlier premillennialists in general, as well as the Millerites in particular, were historicists; that is, they held that the fulfillments of Bible prophecy, including those of Revelation, were to be seen in the course of history, from Bible times to the end. This was actually the view of the infant church; thus the early Christians were historicists even though, standing at the very beginning of Christian history, they necessarily looked to the future for most of the fulfillments. The full-blown futurist view declares that the fulfillments of the majority of the prophecies, including those of the antichrist, the beast, the three-and-one-half times of persecution, et cetera, will occur in the future, at the very end of the age, and that the whole Christian Era is an interim period without prophetic fulfillment. While the Adventists remained historicists, the British premillennialists (Literalists) gradually adopted futurism. By the beginning of the twentieth century most premillennialists in the various churches, at least in Britain and America, were futurists; in recent decades the most vocal segment, if not the majority, have been futurists of the dispensationalist and pretribulationist variety. The dispensationalist premillennialists hold to an extreme separation between “dispensations,” by which they designate successive periods in the history of the world. Among the seven periods they make the “church age” a dispensation of grace, in which the law of God is deemed to be inoperative—an interim period, or “parenthesis,” between an earlier Jewish age of law and a future Jewish dispensation. They expect the Mosaic code, civil and ceremonial, to be in effect in a future Jewish kingdom, which will be a world rule over the “nations” during the millennium. The dispensationalists also hold a pretribulationist view of the Second Advent, that is, they expect the “rapture,” or taking up, of the saints (the church) from the earth to precede the tribulation under a yet future antichrist. They expect the antichrist to be a tyrant who will persecute the Jews (not the Christians) during the literal three and one-half years, the second half of the supposedly delayed seventieth week. Then, seven years after the “rapture,” they expect the visible return of Christ. Not all these views are held by all futurists, yet there is a widespread impression that these doctrines are part and parcel of all premillennialism. Hence they have sometimes been mistakenly attributed to Seventh-day Adventists. III. Seventh-day Adventists as Premillennialists. SDA s are premillennialists only in the literal, chronological meaning of the word—that they expect the Second Advent before the millennium. They agree with the earlier Adventist (Millerite) view that the coming of Christ ends the world as we know it and that the millennium pertains only to the redeemed, glorified, and immortalized saints; but they hold that this reign of the saints is in heaven, not on earth. See Millennium .