Two new articles on the Second Coming
I have added two new articles to my theology page. This last month I have been doing a lot of reading on the subject of end times theology in preparation for a housegroup I was invited to speak at. The passage in question was 1 Thess 4:13-5:11. I have taken some of the themes I found in the passage and turned them into two articles (in PDF format – you need Acrobat to read them):
Together Forever (1 Thess 4:13-18)
People of the Day (1 Thess 5:1-11)
I still have a long way to go before I feel I understand all that the New Testament teaches on this subject, but preparing the study helped a lot. Theologically astute readers will probably be able to detect my millennial position from these, though I do not state it explicitly.
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I read through both documents fairly quickly, but I did glance through all of both of them, and I didn’t detect anything that would rule out healthy versions of any of the major millenial views, which I take to be premillenialism, amillenialism, and postmillenialism.
You’ve ruled out (I think) standard dispensationalist versions of premillenialism (but perhaps not the progressive version common at Dallas; I’d have to read more carefully to see). You’ve ruled out full preterism and perhaps the almost-full preterism that people nowadays are calling partial preterism. I don’t think you’ve ruled out more moderate postmillenial views, which to my mind amount to nothing more than standard amillenialism with a different emphasis. I don’t think you’ve ruled out classic premillenialism either.
Perhaps your astute reader would have to do more than the quick look-through I did, but it didn’t seem to me that you’ve really committed yourself on the crucial points that distinguish the main views.
I too am a bit confused about how close some versions of a-millennial seem to post-millennial. My main issue with post-mill is how you can believe in an “immanent” return in any real sense with so much future prophecy yet to be fulfilled. But I may have missed the point.
I though my downplaying of the importance of Revelation for deducing an end-times timeline might have betrayed my a-mill preference. At the moment (and I admit to needing to do a lot more research) I do not see the purpose of Revelation as filling in lots of missing gaps in Jesus’ end times teaching.
I predict that thou art …
Positive Amillenial / Cautious Post-millenial.
Am I right?!
Positive a-mill sounds close to the mark. I’ll withold judgement on “cautious post-mill” until I’ve read Puritan Hope
Incidentally I was surprised to read recently that John Piper is pre-millennial in theology. I would have bet my bottom dollar he was an a-millennial.
He’s American. The a-millennial slice of the pie is very small over there. Being classic pre means that you still get to be friends (just about) with the dipensationalists. The theonomists are post-mill.
Anyway, what’s this about betting your bottom dollar? Piper might have a thing or two to say about that: http://www.desiringgod.org/library/fresh_words/2003/010103.html