Dispensationalism and the Millennium

Dispensationalists are Premillennial in their view of the Millennium. But all Premillennialists are not Dispensationalists. Many noted Premillennialists expose and reject the particular tenets of Dispensationalists. According to the Premillennial view Christ will return to this world, resurrect the righteous dead according to its interpretation of the "first resurrection" mentioned in Revelation 20, will reign in person on the throne of David in Jerusalem for a thousand years, over a world of men yet in the flesh, eating and drinking, planting and building, marrying and giving in marriage. After the thousand years are finished the rest of the dead shall be raised. This the Premillennialists hold is the second resurrection mentioned in Revelation 20. Christ will then judge the world.

The Post Millennial view (so called because it asserts that the second coming of Christ is after the Millennium at the great day of judgment) is that the Millennium shall be ushered in through Christ coming in the power of the Holy Spirit as He did at Pentecost, blessing the everlasting gospel of the grace of God in all lands. Dr. A. A. Hodge in his Outlines of Theology p. 569 shows that although many of the Christian Jews in the early church, mistaking altogether the spiritual character of the Messiah’s kingdom, were Millennialists or Chiliasts (from the Greek Chilias, a thousand), the view generally recognised by the whole church was the Postmillennial view. It rejected Chiliasm, as did the great Augustine who was a Post Millenialist. Chiliasm or Premillennialism, Boettner observes, was in total eclipse for a thousand years, between the time of Augustine and the Reformation, and that during the Reformation period and for a long time afterward it was held by only a few small sects that were considered quite heretical. The Amillennial view advanced by the German theologian Kliefoth in 1874 denies a millennium in this world. The thousand years or millennium of Revelation 20 is according to this view the millennium of the saints in their intermediate state of perfect blessedness. The A-Millennial millennium is not on this earth but in heaven. The Dutch theologians Drs. Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck and others popularised this view. It is now widely held in Holland and in Dutch circles and professedly orthodox churches in America.