Is the Kingdom of God a present reality or something future? What will the world be like before the second coming? Will the church fulfill the task commissioned by Christ? Will the nations be discipled? These are some of the questions we explore in this documentary as we consider the nature of the Kingdom of God and the optimistic vision for the future that was taught by many great men of faith.
In talking about “Postmil,” the documentary also compares and contrasts it with other popular “eschatological” or “end times” views, including Amillennialism and Premillennialism. There are big differences between these three, but they all get their names from the Millennium, a thousand-year period mentioned repeatedly in Revelation 20, starting with the chapter’s opening verses:
“Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.”
In brief what the three camps believe is:
Premillennialists: Christ will return before (or “pre”) this thousand-year period. There are two main divisions in this group, between Historic premillennialists (which would include John Piper) and Dispensationalists which include Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series.
Postmillennialists: Christ will return after the Millennium (which may or may not be literally 1,000 years), when the whole world has been Christianized.
Amillennialists: Also believe Christ will return after the Millennium, but believe it is symbolic period (the “a” in Amillennial means “not”) so it isn’t a specifically one-thousand-year period. It is understood to be happening right now, with Satan bound after Christ’s resurrection, and it will end with Christ’s return. That doesn’t contrast all that much with the Postmil position, so maybe the biggest difference is that the Amil typically see a future for the Church that involves persecution rather than a gradual global Christianization.
Of these three, the most popular is Premillennialism; though not in our Reformed circles, which are split between the other two, with the larger group being the Amills.