The Popularity of Amillennialism as a Recent Phenomenon. Postmillennialism from the Greats

“The explanation is also greatly strengthened by this fact, too little pressed by Calvinists, that ultimately, THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE WHOLE MASS OF HUMANITY, INCLUDING ALL GENERATIONS, WILL BE ACTUALLY REDEEMED BY CHRIST. There is to be a time, blessed be God, when literally all the then world will be saved by Christ, when the world will be finally, completely, and wholly lifted by Christ out of the gulf, and sink no more. So that there is a sense, most legitimate, in which Christ is the prospective Saviour of the world”

R. L. Dabney
Systematic Theology — p. 525

Charles Hodge famously remarked that “we have reason to believe … that the number of the finally lost in comparison with the whole number of the saved will be very inconsiderable.”

B. B. Warfield held that “nothing less than the world will be saved” by Christ, the world as an organic whole. Indeed, “the number of the saved shall in the end not be small but large,” and will far outnumber the lost.

In a sermon “God’s Immeasurable Love,” Warfield strongly opposed the idea that the elect is a small remnant of the world since they are the world. In this light, he wrote:

“Through all the years one increasing purpose runs, one increasing purpose: the kingdoms of the earth become ever more and more the kingdom of our God and his Christ. The process may be slow; the progress may appear to our impatient eyes to lag. But it is God who is building: and under his hands, the structure rises as steadily as it does slowly, and in due time the capstone shall be set into its place, and to our astonished eyes shall be revealed nothing less than a saved world.”

In “The Prophecies of St. Paul,” he describes the time from the advent to the parousia as “a period of advancing conquest,” Christ “progressively overcoming evil, throughout this period.” Furthermore, Romans 11 “promises the universal Christianization of the world,—at least the nominal conversion of all the Gentiles and the real salvation of all the Jews … the widest practicable extension of Christianity.” We should hope, pray, and work to that end.

Robert Letham
Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 882–883.

 

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

2 thoughts on “The Popularity of Amillennialism as a Recent Phenomenon. Postmillennialism from the Greats”

  1. How do you square this with Matt. 7:14, Luke 18:8 & Rom. 9:28? Luke 13:23-24 looks like a very direct answer to a very direct question: “few there be that find it.”

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