Postmillennialism in America

History II

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Millennial studies

Genre:

Lesson: 2 of 2

Track: 2

Dictation Name: RR199A2

Date:

[Rushdoony] There are fashions in historiography as in everything else. At the present time we have the work of a Yale Professor John Butler who claims that the Great Awakening was nothing more than a myth. However in the 1980’s another historian, Bushman, called attention to the fact that the War of Independence was made possible by the great awakening and the postmillennialism that Jonathan Edwards re-introduced in American life. An eschatology of victory prepared the way for a politics of victory.

Now a notable figure in the Edwardian school was Joseph Bellamy; born February 20, 1719, and dying on March 6th 1790, 72 years old. He was a powerful preacher and strongly reformed. He was disliked by the moderates, that is the compromisers of his day. His fellow Edwardian - Samuel Hopkins – started the American Anti-Slavery movement which Bellamy joined. This is something you rarely ever hear, namely that postmillennialist started the anti-slavery movement and theirs was a responsible movement. Bellamy’s promise was that God would bless a country that obeyed Him. The golden rule was the premise of His anti-slavery cause. In 1758 Bellamy wrote the Millennium. It is regarded by historians as the classic statement of American postmillennialism together with Samuel Hopkins’ work. It is important therefore to give attention to what these two men said, because it had a powerful influence on the course of American theology and history.

Bellamy saw the doctrine as a source of strength and comfort. He looked to Isaiah forty, the first verse “comfort ye, comfort ye my people saith your God.” The embattled church he held needs the comfort and assurance of God’s promises. He wrote, and I quote “It must therefore be remembered as the Son of God left His Father’s bosom and the realm of light and glory, and expired on the cross in the utmost visible contempt that he might spoil principalities and powers, bruise the serpents head, destroy the works of the devil, so His true disciples have imbibed a measure of the same spirit. And as volunteers enlisted under His banner have the same thing in view. They long for the destruction of Satan’s kingdom, and these petitions are the genuine language of their hearts. Our Father which art in heaven hallowed by Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Let me say parenthetically that after World War II some premillennial churches dropped the Lord’s Prayer from use in the services and in the congregations. When I asked one person about it I was told it does not apply until the rapture and the millennium, therefore it is a sin to use it now. To continue “Nor can the salvation of their own souls, although ever so safely secured, satisfy their minds without a clear view and fair prospect of Christ’s final victory over all His enemies.” Notice that, another emphasis of these early postmillennialist in this country.

If you sit back satisfied waiting for heaven because you’ve taken care of salvation, and you bought your life and fire insurance police from Jesus and then you pay no attention to the victory of Christ in history, something is wrong with you. “But if our great general who has sacrificed His life in the cause, may at last obtain a complete victory, not withstanding all the present dark appearances, “this is enough” says the Christian soldier “I am willing to risk all in His service, and die in the battle too.” But if Satan were always to carry the day, oh who could live under that thought”. This was Bellamy’s emphasis. The faithful Christian is not the one who rests contented in His personal salvation, he longs for Christ’s total victory from pole to pole. This, said Bellamy, has been the temper of good men throughout history.

Bellamy then called attention to a series of predictions in scripture. First in Genesis 3:15 we have God’s promise that the seed of the woman would in due time crush the serpents head. Second said Bellamy, in Genesis 3:12 we read “and I will bless them that bless Thee, and curse him that curseth thee and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Families mean nations. All the world’s nations shall be blessed through Abraham’s seed. Third God makes clear, Bellamy said, that His promises are to be fully believed by His many wonderful works from the days of Moses to the time of Solomon. God’s promises have more than a spiritual fulfillment; they are concerned with the totality of life, physical and spiritual. Fourth, Bellamy held, the Old Testament history gives us every assurance that it is God’s design to give to His Son the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession as Psalm 2:8 declares. The prophesies of Isaiah clearly bear this out said Bellamy.

Fifth “when shall these things be?” Bellamy asks. Too many predictions remain unfulfilled. We do not see the satanic powers trodden underfoot; therefore much time remains in history. Then sixth, Bellamy wrote: “Nor is there the least reason to doubt the accomplishment of these things. For God in all things and in all times past has been faithful to His word, and is evidently and sufficiently engaged in this affair, knows how and can easily accomplish it; and it will be much to the honor of His great name to do it. God has been faithful to His promises, to His church from the beginning of the world.” God having sent His Son, Bellamy held, will finish the great work of restoration. Seventh Bellamy noted that Rabbi’s and Christian leaders have fallen into errors in dating the fulfillment of prophesies. This does not invalidate the fact of God’s kept promises, nor His future action. We should keep our eyes on what God says, and not what men say about it. As Bellamy looked to the future he saw a marvelous trial ahead, with Christians triumphant from pole to pole.

Now remember, when we read Samuel Hopkins and Bellamy we have to remember they were living in the difficult days when Britain began to oppress the colonies, when the War of Independence broke out, when the British troops were coming in and burning the churches of these postmillennial pastors. And the troops were mercenaries hired from the continent; they were not moral men so that as they approached woman would run to hide as far away as they could. This is a side of the war we’re not told about.

“The world’s population” Bellamy pointed out, “will vastly increase, as will the numbers of the redeemed.” Now he was writing when there were three million people in what became the United States. He predicted that by the year 2000 it would easily pass two hundred million. Everyone thought that was preposterous thinking on his part. Contrary to the popular myth, and it is a myth, that Calvinist believe that very few will be saved; Bellamy with others held that in the final count few would be lost as the world’s population increased, because so would the percentage of the redeemed increase. And because he believed that for centuries the world would be Christian from pole to pole with countless millions unimagined in his day the percentage of the redeemed as against the lost would be enormous. He wrote “if it be granted that it is difficult to compute with any exactness in such cases as this, yet it is easy to make such a computation as may satisfy us in the point before us, namely that far, far, more will be saved than lost. For in Egypt the Hebrews doubled at the rate of about once in fourteen years. In New England the inhabitants double in less than 25 years. It would be moderate therefore to suppose mankind in the millennium, when all the earth is full of peace and prosperity, will double every fifty years; a modest amount. But at this rate there will be time enough in a thousand years or so to double twenty times, which would produce such a multitude of people as that, although we would suppose all who live before the millennium begins to be lost, yet if all these should be saved there would be above seventeen thousand saved to one that would be lost.”

Now remember there are more people living today than have ever died since Adam’s time. So you can see what Bellamy had in mind. Bellamy held that Christian faith requires a strong hope and certainty about the future. God does not plan to surrender the world to Satan. “We cannot” he said, “have hearts of stone where God’s promises are concerned.” He wrote “it therefore becomes all the followers of Christ in their several sphere’s under a firm belief of these things to be of good courage, and exert themselves to the upmost and the use of all proper means to suppress error and vice of every kind, and promote the cause of truth and righteousness in the world and so be workers together with God.”

Bellamy’s concern was not to convince men of the truth of postmillennialism, it was too obvious if anyone took the Bible seriously. For him the Lord’s Prayer, with its petitions and affirmations “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen.” made clear that this hope was the obvious teaching of scripture and should be the subject of our prayers. The Millennium was written by Bellamy in 1758 in 1763 he published a blow at the root of the refined antinomianism of the present age. Antinomianism was coming in with arminianism. Bellamy’s basic concern in this work was with the false doctrines of assurance being taught which had in essence two errors. First the antinomians placed their confidence with respect to assurance of salvation in mans experience rather than in God’s objective work. They felt that because they had gone forward and said “yes” to Jesus they were saved. They were not putting their hope in the work of Christ, not their experience. “The Christian” He said, “must pray “Lord rather let me have no peace than a false peace.””

What Bellamy’s work tells us very clearly is that postmillennialism was tied then to theonomy. Samuel Hopkins who was born September 17, 1721, died on December 20th, 1803. He wrote a treatise on the Millennium a much longer work than Bellamy’s essay. The dedication of Hopkins treatise is “to the people who shall live in the days of the millennium”. He declared “Hail you happy people, highly favored of the Lord.” Hopkins pointed out in his treatise that millennial thinking was very prominent in the first centuries of the Christian era, but also commonly very fanciful. It still pursued the thinking of the Rabbi’s. As a result many theologians abandoned the subject until after the reformation. Scripture however stresses the fact that God’s chosen people will in due time gain a great victory and enjoy a long era of prosperity for at least a thousand years. He took the term a myriad of years as symbolic of many centuries of triumph. “From Abraham’s day to Malachi we hear of the later day glory” he wrote “certainly Isaiah has much to say on the subject. There are too many texts on the future victory and glory to be set aside.” And so Hopkins rejected the premillennial view of Christ literal reign in that era, the Lord’s second coming will be at the end of the world. He wrote “He is gone to heaven in the human nature, that He might reign there ‘till His enemies are made His footstool and all things shall than be subdued under Him.”

The Holy Spirit will be poured down on men more universally. Men will believe and obey God’s word, there will be universal peace and joy. There will be a spirit of obedience to God’s law word. Hopkins wrote that “When the millennium shall begin the inhabitants which shall then be on the earth will be disposed to obey the divine command to subdue the earth and multiply, until they have filled it. And they will have skill and be under desirable advantages to do it, and the earth will be soon replenished with inhabitants and be brought to a state of high cultivation and improvement in every part of it and will bring forth abundantly for the full supply of all, and there will be many thousands time or people then ever existed before at once in the world.” Remember too that these men believed that as men throw back the power of darkness, the power of Satan, and brought the world under the rule of Christ and God’s law, it would push back also not only the power of sin but of death. And mans’ life expectancy would be greatly lengthened so that in Isaiah’s word, and they believed it literally, a man dying at a hundred would be accounted to be a sinner and to have died young.

Men by obeying and applying God’s word will establish His reign and fulfill the creation mandate. They will exercise dominion and subdue the earth. The millennium will be a return to life in the Lord, it will not be perfect obedience as in Eden before the fall, but it will be a time when dominion under Christ will prevail. Rebelliousness will be gone and there will be again once speech and one tongue. IT will indeed be an era that can be called the day of salvation. The millennium will be a time Hopkins believed, of what can be called a universal Sabbath, a time of holiness to the Lord. While Hopkins indulged in some theorizing as to the time of the millennial time coming, he did not rest his thinking on such dating; it was just a personal hope. He did believe that the universal triumph of Christ’s rule would come by God’s grace and man’s faithful work unto the Lord. He did believe in a great falling away before the end, but his basic emphasis was not on that but on the victory that God had promised and for which men must work.

Now we see in these men a very important emphasis that determined American history. Much more could be said because an important strand of American post-millennial thinking was exegetical. It came out in commentaries. Two very important commentaries stand out in this respect, and they have been read ever since their writing. J. A. Alexander’s Isaiah and T.V. Moore’s Zechariah, they are still very much in use and they are both classics in their field. This postmillennialism marked America’s reformed believers. Earlier in this century the notable thinkers in this camp were Lorraine Boettner and J. Marcellus Kik. Their main works were the Millennium, by Boettner and Eschatology of Victory, by J. Marcellus Kik. A great deal of post-millennial thinking has taken place since then. However I am not going to deal with the contemporary elements except in a general way. I would like to call attention to another book by a still living man, who is not postmillennial, Ian Murray’s book The Puritan Hope did much to draw attention to the postmillennial faith by calling attention to the strong puritan affirmation of eschatological victory. It rather surprised Ian Murray who was not altogether happy that he helped create a postmillennial revival when he does not share that opinion.

The influence of men like B.B. Warfield led to doctrines affirming that the prophetic passages in the New Testament had a first century fulfillment; whereas others have insisted, especially premill’s, on a future fulfillment. You have both first century fulfillment or contemporary fulfillment of the various prophesies in the Bible, and future fulfillment in a postmillennial camp. The two positions are not irreconcilable. By no means so. We can ask if Matthew 24, II Thessalonians 2:1-12, and Revelation for example all had their only fulfillment in the first century A.D. And if that is the case of what value are they for us today? Why are they in the Bible? If on the other hand their fulfillment is still to come of what comfort were they to the suffering saints of those early years. It was given to them for their comfort.

Now a basic fact of scripture confronts us at this point. The progressive fulfillment of prophesies, typology, which has fallen into disrepute because of the fanciful kinds of typologies that we have seen in this century. For example, God in Genesis 13:14-16 promises Abraham that his seed shall inherit the earth; we can say that this promise had a fulfillment in Israel’s possession of Canaan. But it’s great fulfillment we are also told comes in Christ’s blessed meek inheriting the earth. So we cannot say that it had a single fulfillment. Again the term “The day of the Lord” occurs very, very often in the Bible. In the Old Testament it signifies judgment again and again of a particular nation. The day of the Lord comes to that nation, judgment. But it also applies to the last judgment. What’s the relationship? Each of these particular instances of judgment in the Old Testament “days of the Lord” typify the final judgment. So that with all the prophesies, and events for some times, of the Old Testament and of the New, we have progressive fulfillment. They are typological. .

Another notable example is the Sabbath; one day in seven, one year in seven the Jubilee. But we are also told it refers to the possession of the promise land, and most fully of heaven and the new creation. Hebrews 4 tells us plainly of this progressive fulfillment, and this is the way we are to approach all of the aspects of millennial eschatological prophesies in the old and new Testaments. They are similar; they have a series of progressive fulfillments prior to the last days and in the second coming. We cannot limit them to a past or a future reference. They do speak to our time and to more than our time, to past present and future. In recent generations no country has been more concerned with millennial thinking then the United States. This should not surprise us, after all we were born because of millennial thinking. The first settlers came here believing that they were going to build the beginnings of a new heaven and a new earth. It was the Edwardian postmillennialist who were responsible as, non-Christian historians now are in some instances pointing out, for The War of Independence. So that the United States has a background of millennial concern that began with postmillennialism. And it has been rescued from very sorry waywardness again and again by postmillennial reformed thinking.

So it is important to realize that millennial thinking is important; and the American concern with it although both good and bad, is important. It can blind us to our present duties, but it can also stimulate us to action. Postmillennial beliefs have been especially strong stimuli for Christian hope and work. We are a people called to victory, and it will not be handed to us. I mentioned this morning that the millennium was expected by countless multitudes to begin in the year one thousand, and when it did not come many turned away disillusioned, and you did have the development of a certain amount of sensate {?} culture. Culture interested only in enjoying life. But you also had a tremendous stimulus by other Christians who said “we’ve been wrong! Let us get together and Christianize the world, let us hope and pray that as a present wave of premillennial expectation reaches a stage of disillusionment the same revitalization of our Christian mission will again begin.” We once in a postmillennial hope began a vast missionary enterprise to the whole world; let us pray that such an enterprise with a broader scope return again to the American people. Thank you.