# Interesting article on the optimistic eschatology of Calvinistic missionaries



## Pergamum (Jun 29, 2015)

---Even if not expressly postmillennial (an optimistic Amillenialism, rather, seems to be indicated by Carey's quotes), it does seem that it can asserted that an "optimistic eschatology" and a Calvinistic soteriology is what drove Protestant missions.

http://www.contra-mundum.org/schirrmacher/careypostmil.html

​*William Carey, Postmillennialism and the Theology of World Missions

by Dr. Thomas Schirrmacher*



> The early Protestant Mission Boards
> 
> All were Calvinist (Puritan, Anglican-Evangelical or Particular Baptist)
> 
> ...





> None less than the 'Father' of German missiology, Gustav Warneck, considering the influence of eschatology on Reformed mission work, has also discovered evidence that Lutheran eschatology hindered missions up to the rise of Pietism.79 Luther believed that the world was soon to end and that the apostles had already fulfilled the Great Commission.80 Christianity waited for Christ's return, but "expects nothing from this earth."81 The is true of Lutheran theology in general, as Helmuth Egelkraut has observed, "The nearness of the end of the world is and remains the orthodox conviction, which is not to be shaken."82
> 
> The close tie between Postmillennialism, the Reformed doctrine of salvation and the awakening of Evangelical missionary thought can be observed in the German Evangelical movement as well as in America and England.



In his introduction, Carey expresses no doubts that God would build his kingdom on this earth to the same extent as the devil's present government, 


*"Yet God repeatedly made known his intention to prevail finally over all the power of the devil, and to destroy all his works and set up his own kingdom and interest amoung men, and extent it as universally as Satan had extended his."*160


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## Peairtach (Jun 29, 2015)

This is also very much the message of Iain Murray's "The Puritan Hope" (BoT).


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