In my freshly minted opinion, premillennialists are a dime a dozen. Amillennialists, on the other hand, fetch a nickle for two quarter-dozen.
Twas the morning of April 24 when, in a post to Facebook, I called attention to an article from World magazine (“No Path to Normalcy”) and added some comments of my own. I closed my brief comments with this:
We are well on our way…
An unmet-in-real-life friend commented, “Let me guess… You’re a premillennialist?” I have no idea where he stands on the matter, so I don’t know if he asked hopefully or incredulously. Probably just curiously.
Some 25 years ago, one of my high school students asked me a similar question during a class discussion. I recall laughing and replying that I didn’t know.
Maybe I ought to find me a couple of daisies and start plucking petals — amillennialist, imillennialist, panmillennialist, postmillennialist, premillennialist, promillennialist, amillennialist, imillennialist… If it works for discerning love, it ought to work for discerning millennial views, don’t you think?
Well, going back to that classroom long ago, another pupil had been a student of mine long enough to be sure he had me figured out on this thousand-year-reign business. His contribution to that class discussion was to reveal that, on the basis of things he had heard me say in various discussions and monologues, I was a premillennialist.
Works for me.
However, I decided to get a public-perception refresher and posted the question on Facebook: “Am I a premillenialist?”
Among the specific answers I got to that question, my two most treasured observations are these:
I don’t know that I have anything helpful here either. I would be inclined to say that if you had an inclination to incline toward one view, it would be “pre”. That being said, I’m sure you are not inclined in either way enough to be off balance. 😉
Those astute contributions come from my two youngest children (and they’re not babies anymore).
I’ve never taken the test nor matched my beliefs against some Millennialism-a-Self-Diagnosis checklist. I suspect, though, that I don’t fit any handy box, edge to edge with no overflow. I’m probably a hybrid, perhaps even a transitional life form.
So…what do I believe regarding the thousand-year reign mentioned in Revelation (at least)?
- I believe in a literal thousand-year reign by Jesus Christ on Planet Earth.
- I believe in a literal rapture of the saints.
Now I suppose you want to know my timeline for these things. Or at least a sequence of major events. No, thanks. Forget it.
Furthermore, I have no consistent discernment of (or fervent insistence on) clear lines of demarcation between the literal and the figurative in prophecy. I’m sure my understanding of all the details would be a case study in inconsistency. I’m at peace with that condition.
I don’t know what all Pa or Paul thought, or Menno Simons or Anna Baptist, or Aristarchus or Erasmus. I have no clear idea what the early church or the radical reformers believed, or the Apostle John or the prophet Agabus, or the early antibaptists or the original anabaptists. (Frankly, I don’t see how anybody knows. And doubt any proclamations of certitude.)
While I’m being frank, arguments (and even lengthy discussions) about end times interest me until they weary me. And there’s no thousand minutes between interest and weariness.
Do I believe God has a purpose in putting end-time details into the Scriptures? Of course! Do I believe that an aspect of that purpose is for you and me to get them all figured out? Absolutely not.
I do not have sufficient time to put into (imagining I’m) figuring out all the details of the future when I believe I have more than enough stuff to figure out about living Christ in this present age.
“Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness” (2 Peter 3:11).
And that’s enough on this subject. I hope I answered my friend’s question with sufficient clarity. 🙂
Oh, and I invite you to read this also: The Day of Judgment.
Wait, wait. I thought of something else. Here are some questions posed to me among the extensive comments to my question on Facebook:
- Are you an authentic Anabaptist?
- Will you teach others and not teach yourself?
- Where do you stand on Calvinism/Arminianism?
One person apparently read enough from others who know me to exclaim: “Ah! I always suspected that you were a Fundamentalist and not an Anabaptist!” 😯 😀