Keith A. Mathison
Prominent postmillennialist clearly implies Paul could not have been a postmillennialist:
“As far as Paul knew, Christ could have returned in his lifetime.”
Huh? What happened to the millennium?
In his book Postmillennialism: An Eschatology of Hope, (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1999), Keith Mathison says this:
…postmillennialism teaches that the “thousand years” of Revelation 20 occurs prior to the Second Coming. (10); An essential doctrine of postmillennialism is that prior to the Second Coming, the messianic kingdom will grow until it has filled the whole earth. (191)
This explains why Mathison cannot accept preterism: there is no room for his millennium which has already spanned more than 1,900 years. Mathison despises the preterist position so much, he edited another book intended to debunk it (When Shall These Things Be? [Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2004]). However, evidently, he became so confused with the task, he ended up debunking postmillennialism instead.
In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul uses the phrase, “we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:15, ESV). Clearly, Paul thought he might be alive until the second coming. This is not something we would expect a postmillennialist to admit. However, amazingly, Mathison does. He writes, “As far as Paul knew, Christ could have returned in his lifetime” (194).
What is Mathison thinking? Does he not comprehend the implication? If Paul thought Jesus could have returned within his lifetime, there is no way he could have believed in the postmillennialism Mathison promotes. If Paul was a Mathison-style postmillennialist, he would not have expected the second coming for at least a thousand years! So in just a few words, Mathison has obliterated postmillennialism.
A few pages later, he offers support for his previous position, contradicting himself again:
When the word “thousand” is used in Scripture, it refers to a literal thousand or to an indefinite, but very large, number. (209)
Obviously, if Paul thought Jesus “could have returned within his lifetime,” he most certainly did not foresee the “very large number” of years required to fill “the whole earth” with the messianic kingdom; and if Paul didn’t know anything about an enormous millennium, it’s hard to believe that any of the other apostles did. In fact, we know they didn’t. (See the article link below.)
Postmillennialism faces a crisis as genuine preterists continue to aggressively expose fatal flaws in the teachings of Keith A. Mathison, Kenneth L. Gentry and other prominent postmillennialists. See our book The Twilight of Postmillennialism.
Read about The Twilight of Postmillennialism at Amazon.com.
Related article:
The Apostles Predicted a First-Century Return of Christ
Receive e-mail notifications of updates to Michael Fenemore’s blog, The Preterist Report: