What Is Amillennialism? (Clear & Simple Explanation) [Eschatology Matters]

0:00Hey guys, I'm Keith Foskey, sometimes referred to as the king of the homilineals. And I'm doing this video for my friends over at Eschatology Matters. They asked me to come in and talk about the key distinctives of homilinealism. Now what is homilinealism? Well, it's one of the three major positions on how to interpret Revelation, chapter 20, versus one through 10. In Revelation 21 through 10, we hear about this thousand year period where Christ is going to rule and reign with His saints. And this question arises, when is this thousand year kingdom going to come? Is it going to come before Christ returns or is it going to come after Christ returns? And if you believe it's going to come before Christ returns, you're either going to fall into the camp of the post-millennial view, meaning that Christ returns after the millennium, or you're going to fall into the homilineal view, which is the view that I hold. Now if you believe that Christ is going to return before the millennium, then you're

1:02what's known as a pre-millennial believer. So those are the three main positions. And so today, I'm going to talk about why I hold to the homilineal position and what the basic distinctives are of this position. All right, first things first, homilinealism does not mean no millennium, because that's what a lot of people might suspect. When we put an A at the beginning of something like the A before atheist, make someone an atheist means they don't believe in God, some people might think putting the A in front of millennium means that someone doesn't believe in the millennium. And that's not exactly true. What it means, though, is that we don't believe that the millennium is a literal thousand year period, but rather that it's speaking of a spiritual kingdom that exists from the time of Christ's first coming and the time of his second coming, sometimes referred to as the church age. So we would say the millennium is now, that's why homilinealism is sometimes referred

2:03to as inaugurated millennialism or realized millennialism or even there's a word called nuke millennialism, which means now that one will never catch on. But that is another way that some people say it. So when we say homilineal, it doesn't mean that we don't believe that there is millennium. We just believe that the millennium is right now. It's what we call the interadvental period. Advent means arrival or coming. And Jesus came once and he is coming again. And between those two advance, we would say is the millennium. That means it's right now and it's here until Christ returns. Now for the post millennialists, many post millennialists believe something similar that we're in the millennium now. They just believe that there's some different expectations for the millennium. But they would agree, many of them would agree that we are in the millennium right now. All right. This second one is really important. Our millennialists do not read Revelation in chronological order because if we read

3:05a revelation in chronological order, it would lead us to a pre-millennial view because Jesus returns in Revelation 19 and the millennium begins in Revelation 20. But when you look at Revelation all the way through, you find out that it's not giving a chronological expectation of events to come. But rather, it's telling many of the same stories over and over again in a cyclical pattern. This is sometimes referred to as progressive parallelism. And we see this in other places in the Bible. If you go to Genesis 1 and read chapter 1 and then read chapter 2, you find out that the same story is told in two different ways. In chapter 1, we have the six days of creation and on the seventh day, God rests. And within that, we have the creation of man and woman made in the image of God. But then when you get to chapter 2, there's this expanded explanation of the creation of man and woman. And that expanded explanation isn't meant to be in chronological order from chapter 1.

4:07But rather, it's going back to the events of day 6 in chapter 1 and explaining how God created man and woman. That's what we call progressive parallelism. And we believe the same thing happens through the book of Revelation. And so when we get to Revelation 19, we don't expect necessarily that Revelation 20 is going to follow chronologically. But rather, Revelation 20 is telling the story again of the church age from beginning to ending in a short, concise way, showing Christ, ruling and reigning through the hearts of His people over that period, which we call the millennium. It's not a literal thousand years, but it is a period of time between His first coming and His second coming, which is represented by a thousand years, which in biblical terms just means a really long time. As we are told, a day with a Lord is like a thousand years and the Lord owns the cattle on a thousand hills. The word a thousand often just means a lot or a long period of time. Okay. Number three, this one is the one that is often the hardest for folks to swallow.

5:09We believe that because we're in the millennium right now and the millennium begins with the binding of Satan, that Satan is actually bound right now. But he's not bound completely nor is he really bound comprehensively where he can't do anything. But rather, he's bound very specifically. The text says he is bound so as to not be able to deceive the nations. And so what we believe this means is that at the preaching of the gospel, when Christ came the first time and the gospel went out into the world, Satan could not thwart the proclamation of the gospel and the winning of the souls of the nations to Christ. We believe that happened. It even happened during the lifetime of Jesus as his apostles went out and preached to the gospel. They came back to Jesus and Jesus says, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven at the preaching of your words. And so they went out, preach the gospel and Satan fell like lightning from heaven according to Jesus. And we know that Jesus also used the example of the strong man being bound.

6:11He said, you can't plunder a strong man's house unless you first bind the strong man. And in that analogy, Satan is the one who is bound. And so we would say that Satan is bound by the proclamation of the gospel. So as to not be able to lead the nations against Christ's church, but there is coming a time when he is going to be released. And at that time, there's debate among Omelenealists as to what's going to happen if it's going to include a time of great persecution or great apostasy. But we do agree there's a time coming when Satan will be released and it will be close to the end of the age. And it will then bring about the final return of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is one of the distinctions I've heard others say, and I would agree with this, is that in post-millennial theology, post-millennialism sees this rise of Christianity throughout the world and sort of a Christianization of the world and a global success of the gospel. And so when Christ comes, he returns to a saved world.

7:13Omelenealism would say Christ comes to save the world, not coming to a saved world. So that's one of the distinctions between post-millennialism and omelennialism. I hope this has been a helpful overview of omelennialism for you and really just an introduction to this study. As the study does go a lot deeper than what I was able to do in this video today, did want to make one quick distinction here as I draw to a close. And that is the distinction between the three positions as we talk about expectations. As I mentioned earlier, the post-millennial view sort of has an expectation of growth and success and Christianization of the world, whereas the pre-millennial view often is sort of marked by an understanding of tribulation and apostasy leading up to the end, which is going to then bring about the return of Christ, which begins the millennial kingdom here on the earth. And omelennialism sees the history of the church all the way up until the time of Christ as a time of both success and persecution in the world.

8:16There's times where there's great persecution in one area, but great success in another area. And so where the post-millennial view might be considered optimistic and the pre-millennial view by some might be considered pessimistic, the omelennial view, as I jokingly say, is realistic. There are times of great success and times of great persecution. And both of them continuing on until the end of the age, similar to the parable of the wheat and the tares, where Jesus said the wheat and the tares grew up together until the time of the harvest. And so that's a basic understanding of omelennialism, kind of looking at some of the main parts and how we understand the text. And I hope this has been helpful to you. I hope that if you continue to want to study this subject and study eschatology, that you'll continue to look at the videos from eschatology matters and guys over here put out a lot of great material. And again, I want to thank you for watching today's video, and I want to pray that God will continue to bless you in your pursuit of his word. My name is Keith Foskey, and as always, I've been your Calvinist. May God bless you. The steadfast legacy Sumatra is a bold cigar with a nice balance of spice, leather, and

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