# Why do some make much of being pre-mil?



## Jack K

This question came up in the discussion of E-Free denominational distinctives and I thought it deserved its own thread...

Why do some evangelical churches and denominations make a big deal about holding to premillennialism even though they're tolerant on issues like the proper recipients of baptism or on Calvinism/Arminianism? I could see it being tied to dispensationalism, but in many cases (like the E-Free statement) no other distinctives of dispensationalism are mentioned, only premillennialism. Why is pre-mil such a big deal to them?

I don't get it, but maybe that's because I'm amil. It just doesn't seem to me that one's position on the millennium is a first importance matter deserving of a spot in a faith statement that, in many cases, is less than a page long.

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I'll start off with a guess... I've run across some believers for whom one's position on the millennium is seen seen as a test for one's view of Scripture. For them, a person who's not pre-mil must obviously believe Scripture may be read as a myth rather than "literally." So if I tell them I'm amil, they look at me askance as if I surely don't believe Jesus really did miracles, either.

But how did the pre-mil camp get their position so firmly tied to a high view of Scripture in the minds of so many people?

Thoughts? Do any of you have other theories or (better yet) hard information?


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## Scott1

The answer may lie in the fact that modern dispensational premillennialism is a radical form of historical premillenialism.

What the former means has changed greatly over the last generation, abandoning some of its early presuppositions (e.g. Old Testament salvation) and what the latter stood for, I've learned is a matter of some debate.

There is some attraction from someone coming out of dispensationalism to affirm parts of its truth.

Truly,


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## Fly Caster

Re: the Dispensational variety--

My best guess, from my own experience, is that is an un-studied knee-jerk against liberalism. People in the pews (and in the pastorate) have been told for so long that a "literal" interpretation is the only alternative to liberalism that they are firmy "set" in their error. John Gerstner may have spoken too harshly when he refered to Dispensationalism as a "Conservative Heresy," but he was correct about the "Conservative" part.

I have found the best anti-dote is to patiently attempt to convince folk that we do indeed believe the Bible.


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## JML

As a former pre-mill pastor who is now amill, one big issue that some who are pre-mill have with those who are not is not necessarily that one is not pre-mill. Instead, from what I have seen, it relates more to one's view of the tribulation. What angered pre-mills the most when I changed my views was that I no longer believed in a pre-tribulation rapture. It was almost to the point of causing others not to desire to have any fellowship with me anymore. It was stated to me "how could a loving God allow his people to suffer." There are many issues with this viewpoint that are not necessary to get into at this point but that was the main hang up and the main reason pre-mill was so important to them. (Obviously, these were not historic pre-mills but the dispensational variety).


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## cajunhillbilly53

I attend a church where many of the laymen are premil. I avoid the topic like the plague


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## J. Dean

Don't know. Some people have their theological battle lines drawn in strange places.

Frankly, if it's not directly related to one's salvation, I won't get into a fruitless debate about it. While I disagree sharply with somebody who believes in the charismatic/pentecostal take on the Holy Spirit, if he/she trusts in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior alone for their salvation, then they are saved, even if they are in error on a secondary issue (albeit a secondary issue that can lead to serious error if allowed to take the adherent outside Scriptural boundaries). 

You're not saved because you do or don't believe in pre-mil eschatology, and that needs to be remembered on BOTH sides of the argument. Good Christians (even in the Calvinist/Reformed camp) disagree on non-essential issues, and this is one of them. As Francis Schaeffer once remarked: Nobody's theology will be 100 % perfect.


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## Unoriginalname

Humorously enough I was reading Vos last night and when he started mentioning premillenialism he nearly blew a gasket, well he was as animated as I ever saw him. He observed, that a person who expresses any level of doubt about premillenialism to someone who holds to it is usually met with a question such as "Well do you even believe in the second coming?" 
I have to agree with John Lanier that most people who I run into who believe in premillenialism are more upset when I cast doubt on the pretrib rapture theory than anything else.


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## Rich Koster

In Reformed circles, it seems that eschatology is more of a "preference" of a Biblically based theory/formula of how it will play out. In the Dispensational congregations I have attended, the pre trib rapture is a core doctrine. Many have it listed in their statement of faith enumerated a few lines down from the Deity of Christ. I once attended a session at Word of Life (a Bible Institute in Schroon Lake NY) featuring Elwood McQuaid from Friends of Israel. He stated during an eschatology seminar "anyone who teaches differently is a heretic". This received many hearty Amens. Not from I. He was not joking. 

It seems to me that it is tied to a "favored nation" status. They claim that the American Church is favored by God because we have been the great evangelizers of the world, and we back Israel. They propagate something to the drift of "God will not let anything bad happen to the Church", because of what they have done and remove it before all of the "bad stuff" enumerated in Daniel/Revelation prophecy takes place.


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## cajunhillbilly53

Unoriginalname said:


> Humorously enough I was reading Vos last night and when he started mentioning premillenialism he nearly blew a gasket, well he was as animated as I ever saw him. He observed, that a person who expresses any level of doubt about premillenialism to someone who holds to it is usually met with a question such as "Well do you even believe in the second coming?"
> I have to agree with John Lanier that most people who I run into who believe in premillenialism are more upset when I cast doubt on the pretrib rapture theory than anything else.




I actually had a premillenialist ask me that when I said I was amil. He could not understand how one could believe in the Second Coming and not believe in the millennium. I told him to read Luther and Calvin, who he had great rspect for. I told him they were amil like me. He couldn't believe it.

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## CharlieJ

I think the answer is pretty simple. It's a preference for the "easiest" reading of the text. Pre-mills want the Bible to be a plain, easy book that requires virtually no step from exegesis to theology. So, if it says 1000 years, it means 1000 years. If it says 6 days, it means 6 days. Do you just believe the Bible, or do you subject it to interpretive shenanigans (they would ask)? This goes back to the post-Reformation, when Catholics stressed the difficulty of the Bible to underscore the need for authoritative interpreters, and some Reformed really swung the other way, arguing for a simplistic perspicuity of Scripture. This was radicalized during the modernist controversies, when conservatives felt the need to up the stakes by really locking down on biblical interpretation.


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## GulfCoast Presbyterian

The pushback I get from Dispensationalists is usually something like: "If you don't believe in the millennium, or the (pre-trib) rapture, then YOU don't believe Scripture means what it says, and how do you people allegorize away Adam and the Flood?" It gets kind of annoying after a while. Then when you point out all the things in Scripture THEY do not take in a wooden/literal manner, they usually start yelling. I blame MacArthur for some of this....


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## Pergamum

I believe this emphasis resulted from many mainline denominations being influenced by liberalism and the Fundamentalists concluding that a "literal hermeneutic" also meant taking the book of Revelation "literally" as well.


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## J. Dean

GulfCoast Presbyterian said:


> The pushback I get from Dispensationalists is usually something like: "If you don't believe in the millennium, or the (pre-trib) rapture, then YOU don't believe Scripture means what it says, and how do you people allegorize away Adam and the Flood?" It gets kind of annoying after a while. Then when you point out all the things in Scripture THEY do not take in a wooden/literal manner, they usually start yelling. I blame MacArthur for some of this....


And a lot of that stems from the (erroneous) belief that if you don't believe in a two stage "rapture" then in their view you don't believe in a literal coming of Christ at all. Don't ask me how or why such a leap is taken by some of them, but I've seen it happen.

And yeah, if you want to have a rough time, mention political Israel not being God's chosen people for the simple reason that Israel rejects Jesus Christ and also at times has not discriminated between Palestinian Christians and Palestinian Muslims in some of their treatment of Palestinians. My mother in law (a staunch premil-Dispensational) is hooked on John Hagee, and when I've explained that Hagee's Dispensational theology is so extreme that he's dual covenant, she almost does a "na-na-na-I-can't-hear-you!" routine.


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## Curt

Rich Koster said:


> Word of Life (a Bible Institute in Schroon Lake NY)



One of the most dangerous places on earth, in my estimation.


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## Pilgrim

Jack K said:


> This question came up in the discussion of E-Free denominational distinctives and I thought it deserved its own thread...
> 
> Why do some evangelical churches and denominations make a big deal about holding to premillennialism even though they're tolerant on issues like the proper recipients of baptism or on Calvinism/Arminianism? I could see it being tied to dispensationalism, but in many cases (like the E-Free statement) no other distinctives of dispensationalism are mentioned, only premillennialism. Why is pre-mil such a big deal to them?



Jack,

I recall reading not long ago that when the original doctrinal statement of the E-Free denomination was adopted, the general understanding was that the reference to premillennialism in that statement in fact referred to dispensationalism i.e. pre-trib. But because it was not made clear, there are a good number of historic premils in that denomination now, including some notable professors at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Unfortunately, I don't recall where I read this or I would link to it. If memory serves, at least part of the basis of this claim may have been a survey of older E-Free ministers who would have been around at the early days of that denomination. You can read books from the mid 20th century that basically equated dispensationalism with premillennialism. My recollection is that Charles Feinberg basically does this in one of his books. I suspect this oversimplification and misrepresentation (even if unintentional) started to change with the resurgence of historic premil in the mid to late 50's. 

In that context, their allowance for all evangelical views on the mode and subjects of baptism as well as the Calvinism/Arminian issue is more understandable. (I think their statement may teach eternal security but I'm not sure about that.) A few years ago there was a vote on whether or not to remove this insistence on premil from their statement but the vote was against changing it. 

Interestingly, I think the roots of the E-Free church were actually former Scandinavian Lutherans who obviously left their confessions behind decades prior to the formation of this denomination in the mid 20th Century. I know that there were other groups of Lutherans who united with some of their German Reformed cousins, eventually moving left and ending up in the United Church of Christ. 

Most of the early independent Bible church types had left liberalizing paedobaptist churches like the mainline Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Thus the latitude on baptism as well as the emphasis on elder led or elder rule polity. The fundamentals of the faith were seen as being more important than ecclesiology. Unfortunately and wrongly, the fundamentals were construed to include dispensationalism. Chafer himself saw his teaching condemned in 1944 by the PCUS but he remained a member in good standing until his death nearly a decade afterwards. 

Those that stayed in denominations like the PCUSA often could have cared less about what the denomination was doing and largely focused on their own congregation. After all, the rapture was coming soon, right? No doubt some thought the great falling away was happening before their eyes. So why polish the brass... 

In many independent churches around the mid 20th Century (and today in the case of congregations founded at that time), basically you ended up with the famous Five Fundamentals + pretrib + (maybe the Dallas seminary view of sanctification) + inerrancy, with inerrancy being a hot button especially after some self described evangelicals like the ones at Fuller seminary started taking liberal positons on scripture. The fact that those evangelicals who did move left were almost never dispensationalists only served to confirm the suspicion that anything other than pre-trib was a move toward liberalism. 

Baptists tended to remain Baptist unless their churches went far left, which especially in the South tended to be rarer. And in the North you had the various conservative denominations that came out of the Northern convention like the Conservative Baptists, GARBC, etc. Baptists in the South in the early 20th Century tended to be more resistant to getting involved in the fundamentalist movement because it was interdenominational and thus was reckoned to be insufficiently Baptist. To a lesser extent, until recent decades, evangelicalism was seen as a Northern movement as well, and one that was too loose on many matters such as this, even if the Baptist who thought so was dispensational himself. You still have the latter idea today among many Southern Baptists (not to mention indy ones) even if they read evangelical books and view some of the leaders favorably in a general sense. 

I do think it's fair to say that this cuts both ways. I've met a good many amils who would not serve alongside covenant premil brethren and would not be a member of a church where the pastor is historic premil if they could help it. And I'm sure that includes not a few on this board, in some cases driven by the belief that premil in any form is not compatible with the confessions. In independent churches, this is sometimes the case even when the statement of faith does not preclude premillennialism. I had one Calvinistic brother tell me a while back that a post-trib premil could have no part in the teaching ministry of his church, which was to be exclusively amil, presumably.

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## gracea1one

Pilgrim said:


> Jack K said:
> 
> 
> 
> This question came up in the discussion of E-Free denominational distinctives and I thought it deserved its own thread...
> 
> Why do some evangelical churches and denominations make a big deal about holding to premillennialism even though they're tolerant on issues like the proper recipients of baptism or on Calvinism/Arminianism? I could see it being tied to dispensationalism, but in many cases (like the E-Free statement) no other distinctives of dispensationalism are mentioned, only premillennialism. Why is pre-mil such a big deal to them?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Jack,
> 
> I recall reading not long ago that when the original doctrinal statement of the E-Free denomination was adopted, the general understanding was that the reference to premillennialism in that statement in fact referred to dispensationalism i.e. pre-trib. But because it was not made clear, there are a good number of historic premils in that denomination now, including some notable professors at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
Click to expand...



When I took my Systematic Theology III class (dealing with eschatology) a few years ago at a TEDS extension site, my prof was a historic pre-mil. In fact, according to him, the only professor in the systematic theology department at TEDS who was a dispensational pre-mil was John Feinberg (who is a Calvinist in terms of soteriology). I don't have any way of verifying that, but thought it was interesting to note. I've always wondered if there were "creative" ways of getting around the millennium issue for professors at TEDS (and other seminaries). For instance, Dr. Robert Yarbrough taught at Covenant for five years before going to TEDS and teaching there for 14 (?) years. Now he is back at Covenant. My understanding is that in order to teach at Covenant you have to subscribe to the Westminister (amil), and to teach at TEDS you have to agree with the doctrinal statement (pre-mil). Seems like something has to give...


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## Pilgrim

gracea1one said:


> Pilgrim said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Jack K said:
> 
> 
> 
> This question came up in the discussion of E-Free denominational distinctives and I thought it deserved its own thread...
> 
> Why do some evangelical churches and denominations make a big deal about holding to premillennialism even though they're tolerant on issues like the proper recipients of baptism or on Calvinism/Arminianism? I could see it being tied to dispensationalism, but in many cases (like the E-Free statement) no other distinctives of dispensationalism are mentioned, only premillennialism. Why is pre-mil such a big deal to them?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Jack,
> 
> I recall reading not long ago that when the original doctrinal statement of the E-Free denomination was adopted, the general understanding was that the reference to premillennialism in that statement in fact referred to dispensationalism i.e. pre-trib. But because it was not made clear, there are a good number of historic premils in that denomination now, including some notable professors at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> When I took my Systematic Theology III class (dealing with eschatology) a few years ago at a TEDS extension site, my prof was a historic pre-mil. In fact, according to him, the only professor in the systematic theology department at TEDS who was a dispensational pre-mil was John Feinberg (who is a Calvinist in terms of soteriology). I don't have any way of verifying that, but thought it was interesting to note. I've always wondered if there were "creative" ways of getting around the millennium issue for professors at TEDS (and other seminaries). For instance, Dr. Robert Yarbrough taught at Covenant for five years before going to TEDS and teaching there for 14 (?) years. Now he is back at Covenant. My understanding is that in order to teach at Covenant you have to subscribe to the Westminister (amil), and to teach at TEDS you have to agree with the doctrinal statement (pre-mil). Seems like something has to give...
Click to expand...


Rob,

Thanks for your post. I knew that Feinberg was dispensational, but even he is a progressive dispensationalist, probably more "progressive" than someone like MacArthur. My guess was that most of the others on the faculty were historic premil but I had no idea about a percentage. 

I'd be interested to know how many, if any, of the TEDS faculty holds to any kind of covenant theology i.e. at least upholding the unity of the covenant of grace. Many evangelicals today, even Calvinistic ones WRT soteriolgy, reject the idea out of hand. Yarbrough was one who did affirm it, obviously. With regard to "creativity," there are abundant examples of professors and ministers signing a confession with fingers crossed behind their backs. 

Unless something has changed at Covenant in recent decades, there is no amil litmus test. I think there may still be a handful of premil faculty members. In the early days, when it was affiliated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (not the same as today's EPC) and later due to a merger, the RPCES, (which later was absorbed into the PCA) there were several notable premils, including J. Barton Payne and J. Oliver Buswell. And some of these men weren't conventional covenant premils, although they certainly weren't conventional dispensationalists either. While evidently much rarer today, some form of premillennialism was probably the predominant view in those broader evangelical Presbyterian circles in that day. The first EPC consisted of a group that came out of the Bible Presbyterian Church, a fundamentalist denomination which was so dominated by premils that it adopted a revision of the Westminster Standards that taught premillennialism. 

As I understand it, Covenant Seminary has always been more broadly evangelical than most other conservative Presbyterian seminaries that were established in the 20th Century. It has never has been strict subscriptionist, especially to the point of excluding premils. I realize that someone who is not rather intimately familiar with recent Presbyterian history and controversies wouldn't immediately understand this distinction between a seminary like Covenant and a rather strict subscriptionist one like Greenville, for example.


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## Rich Koster

Curt said:


> Rich Koster said:
> 
> 
> 
> Word of Life (a Bible Institute in Schroon Lake NY)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One of the most dangerous places on earth, in my estimation.
Click to expand...


They actually have a very nice family campground. You just need to bring mosquito & Dispensational repellent.


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## Herald

Curt said:


> Rich Koster said:
> 
> 
> 
> Word of Life (a Bible Institute in Schroon Lake NY)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One of the most dangerous places on earth, in my estimation.
Click to expand...


My alma mater. 

sent from my most excellent Android device.


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## MW

Jack K said:


> I don't get it, but maybe that's because I'm amil.



How much a Christian invests in the reign of Christ will determine how much he makes of his millennial view. An amil believes that Jesus reigns NOW. A premil believes He will reign THEN.


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## Herald

Curt said:


> Rich Koster said:
> 
> 
> 
> Word of Life (a Bible Institute in Schroon Lake NY)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One of the most dangerous places on earth, in my estimation.
Click to expand...


Curt, no more dangerous than your average fundamentalist, dispensational school. Word of Life, Liberty, Tennessee Temple, Pensacola Christian College, Bob Jones...they are all part of the same genre.


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## gracea1one

All -

Thought this might help with what the EFCA was thinking with their pre-mil position...and can be found on pages 225-226 of the book: Evangelical Convictions (A Theological Exposition of the Statement of Faith of the EFCA)

_We in the EFCA often speak of our desire to "major on the majors and minor on the minors" in delineating our core doctrinal convictions, and our Statement of Faith largely reflects that. We have set forth those doctrines which are very closely connected to the gospel itself and which have been widely held by Bible-believing Christians through all ages. We deliberately do not take a position on such significant issues as whether the regenerating work of the Spirit occurs before or after faith, or the time and mode of baptism - issues which have divided Christians throughout the centuries. And we recognized that Evangelical believers with strong convictions regarding the inerrant authority of the Scriptures have taken different positions on the millennium. In light of our distinctive ethos in the EFCA of uniting around the central doctrines of the faith, the inclusion of premillennialism in our Statement of Faith seems to many to be out of place. In the period leading up to the revision of our Statement of Faith in 2008, we in the EFCA wrestled with wither to include premillennialism among our core theological convictions. In the end, the EFCA Board of Directors, after initially proposing three drafts without it, decided to present to our Conference a revised Statement that did include premillennialism. The Board determined that though many among us recognized that it was not a doctrine central to the gospel, it remained to many others a distinctive theological position of our movement that they would very strongly oppose changing. Consequently, the Board concluded that attempting to remove premillennialism at this time would create significant disunity and disruption. The General Conference agreed with that decision voting to adopt the revised Statement of Faith. We expound it here with the understanding that we do not claim that it is an essential doctrine of Evangelical faith, but it remains a distinctive theological postiion of the EFCA._

In short, I had heard that there was a real fear of certain percentage of the EFCA congregations leaving the denomination if premillennialism was removed so they kept it. Honestly, I wish they would have removed it (and I'm historic pre-mil). I personally know there are pastors within the EFCA who are a-mil and that article #9 in the SOF is the only thing keeping them from seeking ordination.


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## R Harris

J. Dean said:


> GulfCoast Presbyterian said:
> 
> 
> 
> And yeah, if you want to have a rough time, mention political Israel not being God's chosen people for the simple reason that Israel rejects Jesus Christ and also at times has not discriminated between Palestinian Christians and Palestinian Muslims in some of their treatment of Palestinians. My mother in law (a staunch premil-Dispensational) is hooked on John Hagee, and when I've explained that Hagee's Dispensational theology is so extreme that he's dual covenant, she almost does a "na-na-na-I-can't-hear-you!" routine.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> For me, this is one of the most troubling and disturbing aspects of pre-mil Dispensational thinking. It's as if somehow the Palestinians are not real people and that therefore the Gospel is not applicable to them.
> 
> Over the past several years, I have known three people, one a pastor, who have been to Israel and speak of the horrible, dispicable treatment that the Palestianians, and especially the *Christian* Palestinians, receive from the Israelis. Yet, somehow supposed "evangelicals" look the other way at such persecution. How can this be for a true Christian?
> 
> And yes, the Israeli government and much of the people are openly hostile towards the Gospel. Just go try evangelizing in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and see what kind of reception you get.
> 
> Very, very disturbing.
Click to expand...


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## KSon

CharlieJ said:


> I think the answer is pretty simple. It's a preference for the "easiest" reading of the text. Pre-mills want the Bible to be a plain, easy book that requires virtually no step from exegesis to theology. So, if it says 1000 years, it means 1000 years. If it says 6 days, it means 6 days. Do you just believe the Bible, or do you subject it to interpretive shenanigans (they would ask)? This goes back to the post-Reformation, when Catholics stressed the difficulty of the Bible to underscore the need for authoritative interpreters, and some Reformed really swung the other way, arguing for a simplistic perspicuity of Scripture. This was radicalized during the modernist controversies, when conservatives felt the need to up the stakes by really locking down on biblical interpretation.



I think Charlie is onto it here. It boils down to hermeneutics and hermeneutical perception. The "if it doesn't truly mean 1000, what else does Scripture 'not mean'" argument comes into play. Many take that literal hermeneutic as a badge of honor or, better yet, a badge of orthodoxy. Mention the amil position, then talk inevitably turns to the church being overwhelmingly premill prior to Augustine, who injected his presuppositions into his hermeneutics, and off we go. At the more extreme end, if you question the premill position, you are questioning the faithfulness of God to His promises to Israel and thereby calling His character into question.


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## Gator_Baptist

I am a member of an EFCA church, so I could probably explain. I can tell you that there is a push within the EFCA to repeal the pre-mil requirement. There is even an elder in my church that is amil.

I believe the reaction that is spoken of has to do with hermeneutics. For many pre-mil folks there is just a deep conviction that scripture is supposed to be read a certain way. It is difficult for people to swallow the allegorizing of Israel, the allegorizing of the kingdom, etc.

It might be helpful to understand that this was common in the early church as well. Prior to Augustine it was common for people to denounce many of the things that Augustine later taught as heresy. Just think about Justin Martyr's statement about how all right thinking Christians held to the chiliastic view of scripture.


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## heartoflesh

Our denomoniation has the premillennial wording in it's statement of faith as well. If you ask people what they think it means, 4 out of 5 think it means a pre-trib rapture.


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## bookslover

I think the real solution is to effect a permanent disconnect between premillennialism and dispensationalism. You definitely don't need to be the latter in order to hold the former. Unfortunately, dispensationalism has, I guess, had nearly 200 years to permanently poison the premillennial well.


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## DMcFadden

At the turn of the last century the "return of Christ" was one of the five fundamentals. My guess is that most understood this in terms of premillennialism. It became a shibboleth. As several have stated, it was a test of orthodoxy vis a vis liberalism. Just as no liberal worthy of the name would buy into innerancy or the virgin birth, neither would they accept a "fundamentalist" interpretation of Revelation.

Insofar as people exposed to higher theological education generally gravitate toward a form of amillennialism, my bet is that in a few more decades "evangelical" churches will be mostly amil. The popularity of the new Calvinists may also make the amil view more popular among rank and file Christians.

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## MarieP

Fly Caster said:


> My best guess, from my own experience, is that is an un-studied knee-jerk against liberalism. People in the pews (and in the pastorate) have been told for so long that a "literal" interpretation is the only alternative to liberalism that they are firmy "set" in their error. John Gerstner may have spoken too harshly when he refered to Dispensationalism as a "Conservative Heresy," but he was correct about the "Conservative" part.



I was about to say, many think of the amil position as necessarily giving way to liberalism or Catholicism. The PCUSA church I grew up in was amil, and so, when I first encountered a conservative church, I was quick to adopt their eschatology because "this is what conservatives believe." I 'd think there'd be a similar reaction to the postmil position among dispensationalists- they'd bring up the "social gospel."


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## Jack K

DMcFadden said:


> my bet is that in a few more decades "evangelical" churches will be mostly amil. The popularity of the new Calvinists may also make the amil view more popular among rank and file Christians.



I've wondered about this and suspected the same thing. The Baptist church I attend removed premillennialism from its faith statement several years ago, about the same time the leadership went in a decidedly Calvinistic direction on soteriology and first talked about installing elders.

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## Bill The Baptist

Jack K said:


> DMcFadden said:
> 
> 
> 
> my bet is that in a few more decades "evangelical" churches will be mostly amil. The popularity of the new Calvinists may also make the amil view more popular among rank and file Christians.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've wondered about this and suspected the same thing. The Baptist church I attend removed premillennialism from its faith statement several years ago, about the same time the leadership went in a decidedly Calvinistic direction on soteriology and first talked about installing elders.
Click to expand...


I agree that the church is slowly changing in regards to its view on eschatology. As Paul Washer once said in a sermon, "There is a reformation going on in the church today, but most people over 40 have no idea it is happening."


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## Zork

J. Dean said:


> Don't know. Some people have their theological battle lines drawn in strange places.
> 
> Frankly, if it's not directly related to one's salvation, I won't get into a fruitless debate about it. While I disagree sharply with somebody who believes in the charismatic/pentecostal take on the Holy Spirit, if he/she trusts in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior alone for their salvation, then they are saved, even if they are in error on a secondary issue (albeit a secondary issue that can lead to serious error if allowed to take the adherent outside Scriptural boundaries).
> 
> You're not saved because you do or don't believe in pre-mil eschatology, and that needs to be remembered on BOTH sides of the argument. Good Christians (even in the Calvinist/Reformed camp) disagree on non-essential issues, and this is one of them. As Francis Schaeffer once remarked: Nobody's theology will be 100 % perfect.



Well said. Agree 100%


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