The Kingdom Come

Christianity has always had a positive perspective. A perspective of continual, eventual, perpetual victory, even when it appears it is being defeated (2 Corinthians 10:4-5, Romans 8:36-38). Eventually, this perspective came to be called postmillennialism. Postmillennialism is simply the perspective that Christianity will continue to dominate the world. It was a postmillennial view that was behind the triumphantism of the original settlers of the United States of America. They believed that the kingdom was advancing even to the unknown parts of the world.

The 3 minute video below [see April 28, 2010 video] represents a good summary of postmillennial Christianity in opposition to what we might call "Left-Behindism" found mainly in premillennial dispensationalism.

[UPDATE: Video no longer active -- sorry]

Unfortunately, after the American Civil War and both World Wars, much of the Postmillennial perspective has given way to the defeatist theology of "Left Behindism". The view most prevalent among at least American Christians is the idea that we are on a sinking ship.

This is the reason many Christians have abandoned trying to influence the "house of Caesar" - Philippians 4:22 (society in general). Instead, Christians have retreated from government, from schools, from the arts, from influence on anything. We have been told to have a bunker mentality where we are hiding behind closed doors waiting for Jesus to tell us it's okay to come out. (John 20:19)

But even worse than that, a new reactionary theology is developing in response to "Left Behindism". The new, and as much erroneous perspective is called Preterism or Hyper-Preterismⁱ (which is the more vocal form). Preterism, unlike postmillennialism or premillennialism claims that the victory was in the past (preterite = past), specifically at the year AD70 with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Herodian/Jewish Temple. Unlike the video, Hyper-preterism claims the judgment ALREADY happened and that we are more or less in "heaven now".

So, it seems a good grounding in historic Christian eschatology is in order. Since on one hand we have a defeatist "Left-Behindism" and on the other we have the heretical, relativity of Preterism.