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Transcript 210A — The Amillennial and Premillennial Positions
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes, Mr. Camping. With respect to the amillennial view of eschatology versus the premillennial view, of that, how can we interpret what the Kingdom of God means?
HC: Your question has to do with the difference between the amillennial and the premillennial position, and how does the Kingdom of God fit into this?
Actually, the premillennial position is that there is to be a thousand year Golden Age some time in the future. It will be a time when God's Kingdom will be manifested on this sin-cursed earth, with Christ Himself reigning from Jerusalem, as a political king over the nations of the world. It will be a golden age for the Christians, because the whole world will be under the rulership of Christ. It will be preceded by a seven-year tribulation period. And either at the beginning of this period, or in the middle of' this period, or at the end of this period, the Christians will be raptured. They'll be caught up in the air to be with Christ. Now where they are to be and how they are to relate to this millennial period, I have no idea, because in my judgment the idea of a future 1,000 year golden age, with Christ ruling on this sin-cursed earth is quite foreign to the Bible.
In other words, the view there, however, is of a kingdom that is quite earthly in nature. It's a kingdom that is in the dress of a modern political kingdom, in which you have the earthly potentate, even though He is Christ Himself.
Now in the amillennial position, the word "a" simply means no millenium, that is, no future golden age, it looks upon the thousand years of Revelation 20 as simply the whole New Testament period. And the Kingdom of God in that view is the body of Christ. We enter that Kingdom at the moment we are saved. It is an eternal, spiritual Kingdom. It is as literal in existence as a political kingdom, but it is of a spiritual quality. It is a kingdom in which the throne is in Heaven, and it is eternal in nature. It is infinitely more wonderful and mighty and marvelous than any political kingdom could ever be.
Christ is the King. He became the King by virtue of His going to the cross. And we enter that Kingdom by becoming born again, even as we read in John 3:5. We cannot enter the Kingdom unless we are "born of water and the Spirit." And we can't see the kingdom unless we're born again. And it is a Kingdom that begins in the fact that we have received our resurrected souls at the time we're born again. If we should die before Christ returns, we live with our King in Heaven, in our soul existence. And when Christ comes at the end of time, to wrap everything up, which is very close at hand now, it's not a thousand years away some place, then we will come with Him, and we will take part in the judgment process. And then we will live eternally with Him in the New Heaven and the New Earth, after He has renovated this old earth by burning it with fire and recreating it New Heavens and a New Earth.
CALLER: Then would you say that the premillennial view is developed on an excessive literalization of scripture, or from a Scofield type of thinking, or what?
HC: The question is, where did the premillennial position develop from? Was it developed from an excess of literalism in Bible interpretation, or how was it developed?
Well, I don't know exactly what the whole pattern of development is. But I think, first of all, that it is a slipping back into the same snare that the Jews were in when Christ came the first time. They were looking for the Messiah, but they were looking for an earthly kingdom. They were looking for a Messiah who would rule in Jerusalem and free them from Roman rule. They missed altogether the eternal spiritual nature of the Kingdom.
And so again the church is walking in precisely the same shoes. Now the reason the Jews came into this way of thinking was two-fold. One was the fact that they missed altogether the nature of salvation. They were looking at a salvation that was based on their works, their merits, rather than on the grace of God. They didn't understand the precise nature of the atonement, and the purpose of the atonement.
Thc second reason they missed the real meaning of the Kingdom was that they were listening to their commentaries. They had the Talmud, which was the Bible that existed in that day, together with all of the commentaries of the learned Jews. And they interpreted the scripture by these commentaries. Therefore they had lost their sensitivity as to the holiness and the uniqueness of the Word of God. And so consequently they were not really able to understand the true nature of salvation or the true nature of the Messiah and His Kingdom.
Now today the same characteristics prevail, to an alarmingly high degree. There is a vast misunderstanding of what salvation is. There are those who say that we can lose our salvation. They have no idea of the eternal character of salvation. They have no idea of the fact that Christ has paid for all of our sins.
There are those who believe that it is our work to believe on Him, and then Christ takes over from that point. And this again develops a salvation that is grace, but it also has our works added to it. And that again is not the salvation of the Bible.
And when you have a misunderstanding of what salvation is, then of course you also misunderstand what the Kingdom is. And it's very easy to slip into this kind of a situation.
Thirdly, today also we have the same situation. There are those who are listening to the commentaries, to their learned theologians. Now those theologians may be helpful, but they are not God. Incidentally, the fact that some Bibles have notes at the bottom has increased greatly the prevalence of doctrines that are in agreement with those notes, because those notes are looked upon effectively, even though when pressed with the question, they'll say, "No, that isn't the Bible," as being equivalent to the Bible. And the proof of it is that those who use Bibles with those kinds of notes on the bottom of the pages will find that their doctrinal position aligns with those notes almost to a "T," because they have accepted it as the divine Word. And this puts them in the same position with the Jews of the Old Testament, that read the Talmud as the divine Word.