Quick Survey on Eschatological Positions of Current Board Regulars

What is your broad position?

  • Amillennial

    Votes: 55 62.5%
  • Postmillennial

    Votes: 26 29.5%
  • Premillennial

    Votes: 6 6.8%
  • Something that distinguishes itself from all 3

    Votes: 1 1.1%

  • Total voters
    88
  • Poll closed .
Status
Not open for further replies.

Vox Oculi

Puritan Board Freshman
Where does the community of PuritanBoard stand with regard to their eschatology?

Amil, Premil, Postmil? Preterite, Partial Preterite, Historical Premillennialism? Pre, post, mid-trib or pre-wrath Rapture? Literal Millennium or not?

Also, out of curiosity, since people seem to divide the following ways: Covenant Theology with Amillennialism, and Dispensationalism with Premillennialism, I'm curious if anyone comes down another way.

Short question to answer in the comments: what are you actually expecting in terms of what the next 20-80 years in the future will bring?

Useful reading regardless of one's view:

Why Study Eschatology?
Reason Three: God Put It In The Bible

Again, I don’t mean to sound like a wise guy here, but hopefully the strength of this point is its obviousness. If the Holy Spirit saw fit to fill the pages of the Bible with abundant (and I do mean abundant) references to the last-days, then why do the vast majority of Christians pass over these portions of Scripture? Why do so many Christians tend to be a bit cynical or dismissive when it comes to, for instance, the Book of Revelation? While God never says explicitly, “thou shall study eschatology”, He may as well have said it by simple virtue of the fact that He gave it such a place of prominence in the Bible. We must ask ourselves, “If God doesn’t want me to study and understand this stuff, then what is it there for?” Think about this fact: Over twenty-five percent of the verses in the Bible contain predictive/prophetic content 2 If we disregard that twenty-five percent (along with of course, those infamous and pesky genealogies) then we can significantly whittle the Bible down quite a bit. But before we do that, I suppose we’ll have to first toss out that verse that says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Sorry, I guess I was trying to be a wise guy after all… My apologies.
 
I have never been set in what I believe. I can, however, say that I am making it a main priority over these next three months.

/I used to be premil, but that has since changed, and I am now in limbo.
 
I have never been set in what I believe. I can, however, say that I am making it a main priority over these next three months.

/I used to be premil, but that has since changed, and I am now in limbo.

I think a lot of assertions made by people who are premillennial have been wildly mistaken and often wholly unnecessary, but furthermore, not a direct outworking from the plain statements of the text - and so, I find that there is much that one can dispute in modern American eschatological predictions/assertions without being required to abandon the entire framework of a premillennial eschatology.

For example, it is true that the formation of the present state of Israel is significant. But it is not a complete fulfillment of the prophecy that the Jewish people would be gathered together in Israel again. At best, it is a partial fulfillment. There are no sacrifices at present, nor a temple for them to be offered at, so one could not be fully accurate in saying that Israel of the Old Testament has been reborn as yet. The existence of Jews in the land of Israel is strong circumstantial evidence for the impending fulfillment of prophecies regarding National Israel, but to trumpet it as a fulfilled prophecy is to be hasty and ultimately disrespectful of the text. The Scripture is greater than the vacuity of human excitement.
 
Tentatively historic premil, though I've been reading heavily in Milbank's re-reading of Augustine's take on "peace." So who knows where I will end up.

For example, it is true that the formation of the present state of Israel is significant. But it is not a complete fulfillment of the prophecy that the Jewish people would be gathered together in Israel again. At best, it is a partial fulfillment. There are no sacrifices at present, nor a temple for them to be offered at, so one could not be fully accurate in saying that Israel of the Old Testament has been reborn as yet. The existence of Jews in the land of Israel is strong circumstantial evidence for the impending fulfillment of prophecies regarding National Israel, but to trumpet it as a fulfilled prophecy is to be hasty and ultimately disrespectful of the text. The Scripture is greater than the vacuity of human excitement.

Historic Premil might have problems, but it doesn't have those problems. You have described American Dispensational Premil.
 
Lemme recommend John MacArthur as a premillennial who is definitely not whimsical in his choice of adherence. There are at least a few youtube audios of him speaking on the subject. One's even entitled, "why every calvinist should be a premillennialist." Just to make you curious.
 
Lemme recommend John MacArthur as a premillennial who is definitely not whimsical in his choice of adherence. There are at least a few youtube audios of him speaking on the subject. One's even entitled, "why every calvinist should be a premillennialist." Just to make you curious.

I've heard it. I've gone through the audio of his Revelation series.
 
I don't know just how to vote. I hold to a triumphalist eschatology and an idealist reading of Revelation. Idealist/Postmillennialist? Optimistic Amillenialist?

By the way, my spellcheck thinks that "postmillennialist" should be "postmenopausal." I am certainly not postmenopausal.
 
Lemme recommend John MacArthur as a premillennial who is definitely not whimsical in his choice of adherence. There are at least a few youtube audios of him speaking on the subject. One's even entitled, "why every calvinist should be a premillennialist." Just to make you curious.

Thanks Vox for the recommendation but I find John MacArthur's eschatology both dangerous and misleading.
 
It would be best if the Poll distinguished between Dispensational Premillennialism and Historic Premillennialism.

I am Amillennial.
 
Postmil, but with a pretty big conviction that the "beasts kingdom" will still exists in some form until the Second Coming.

In terms of hermeneutic, I'm a partial-preterist, but "Revelation Idealism" I think is a real thing.
 
Lemme recommend John MacArthur as a premillennial who is definitely not whimsical in his choice of adherence. There are at least a few youtube audios of him speaking on the subject. One's even entitled, "why every calvinist should be a premillennialist." Just to make you curious.

I listened to it a few days after he delivered that message at the Shepherd's Conference and was extremely disappointed in the strawman arguments he made. I usually enjoy MacArthur but that would be an exception. It is in this area that MacArthur's dispensationalist roots are most strongly exhibited. Kim Riddlebarger had a thoughtful response.
 
It would be best if the Poll distinguished between Dispensational Premillennialism and Historic Premillennialism.

I am Amillennial.

I really doubt you could subscribe to any of the Reformed confessions for this board in any meaningful way and be a dispensationalist.
 
Also, not every posting of an event necessarily has theological baggage behind it. For example, I believe the Temple will be rebuilt by the Jews (funded by the American taxpayer) because that is what the Jews want. I believe it is a bad thing, but my believing it will happen is independent of Dispensational excitement.
 
"Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God." This indicates to me that every Christian implicitly believes in something that is already realised in Christ. Whether he articulates it correctly is another matter.
 
Where does the community of PuritanBoard stand with regard to their eschatology?

Amil, Premil, Postmil? Preterite, Partial Preterite, Historical Premillennialism? Pre, post, mid-trib or pre-wrath Rapture? Literal Millennium or not?

Also, out of curiosity, since people seem to divide the following ways: Covenant Theology with Amillennialism, and Dispensationalism with Premillennialism, I'm curious if anyone comes down another way.

Short question to answer in the comments: what are you actually expecting in terms of what the next 20-80 years in the future will bring?

Useful reading regardless of one's view:

Why Study Eschatology?
Reason Three: God Put It In The Bible

Again, I don’t mean to sound like a wise guy here, but hopefully the strength of this point is its obviousness. If the Holy Spirit saw fit to fill the pages of the Bible with abundant (and I do mean abundant) references to the last-days, then why do the vast majority of Christians pass over these portions of Scripture? Why do so many Christians tend to be a bit cynical or dismissive when it comes to, for instance, the Book of Revelation? While God never says explicitly, “thou shall study eschatology”, He may as well have said it by simple virtue of the fact that He gave it such a place of prominence in the Bible. We must ask ourselves, “If God doesn’t want me to study and understand this stuff, then what is it there for?” Think about this fact: Over twenty-five percent of the verses in the Bible contain predictive/prophetic content 2 If we disregard that twenty-five percent (along with of course, those infamous and pesky genealogies) then we can significantly whittle the Bible down quite a bit. But before we do that, I suppose we’ll have to first toss out that verse that says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Sorry, I guess I was trying to be a wise guy after all… My apologies.

Why do you have more options in your post than poll?
 
Why do you have more options in your post than poll?

It was my first time trying a poll (I wasn't sure how it would post but now I know that you create the poll after hitting 'submit new thread'), and didn't want to put in lots of effort to get it all right and something go wrong. So I elected to go with the broad categories--since I hoped people would specify in their post.
 
I think when you say post mil you need to separate into the theonomist post mil and the non theonomy. Hubby went post mil gradually over the period of a year or two (he was amil)but isn't theonomist.

And for amil, our pastor calls himself an optimistic amil, and anticipates a great harvest of souls much like a post mil. I am in that category, I think. Some post mils make disparaging remarks about amils who are just hanging on while the world gets worse and worse until Jesus comes back, but you can be amil and yet pray for great revival with optimistic faith.

I happen to think we are probably at the end of the mil when Satan gets unloosed, and we see that happening with Islam, and hatred of Christianity in the former western nations. I am very concerned about nuclear weapons and power plants, and fallout as a drastic future scenario unknown in all of history (unless they had nukes before Noah). But I am optimistic for revival.

I think if you do not believe in a pretrib or midtrib rapture, you are in a small minority compared to all the Dispensationalists. So amils and historic premils and postmils need to stick together!!
 
our pastor calls himself an optimistic amil

I voted postmil, but am I really an "optimistic amil," since I think we are in the millennium now. Does that make me amil even though I have grandiose hopes for the future?" E.g.' Conversion of national Israel, Isaiah 2, etc.
 
Interesting. I think I'm getting some new information in regard to what amillennials believe. I would've thought their eschatology to be entirely figurative, but the way some of you have commented makes your future expectations much more resemble dispensational premillennialism (future calamity, a Beast, salvation of ethnic Israel, a rebuilt Temple) than I would have inferred based on my understanding of what amillennialism is.

Would that mean that an amillennial could be almost identical in persuasion to a pretrib, premil "Dispensational" with the one exception being that upon Christ's 2nd coming, He ushers in eternity immediately rather than a thousand year parenthesis?

Anyone want to take a shot at that?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top