Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 100:398 (Apr 1943)
Article: Premillennialism: Its Relations to Doctrine and Practice Part 4
Author: S. H. Kellogg

BSac 100:398 (Apr 43) p. 301

Premillennialism: Its Relations to Doctrine and Practice
Part 4

S. H. Kellogg

(Reprint of the April-June Number, 1888, concluded from the October-December Number, 1942)

This consideration very naturally leads us to consider the actual practical bearings of the premillennialist eschatology. It should be very plain, one would think, that the system, whether true or not, if believed, ought to intensify in a high degree the interest of the believer in the redemption of the world. The system is indeed differentiated from others in nothing more than in this, that it places the redemption of the whole world, the restoration of all things, in the very forefront of the divine purpose regarding fallen man. The work of Christ has not only made this issue possible, but certain; and everything has been arranged and preordained by God to this end. The practical bearing of such a view as this is evident. Certainly the man who believes something like this to be a true exhibit of the revealed plan of God, the key to history, and the ultimate object of his individual salvation, just in proportion to the strength of this conviction, must be a man who forgets self in the work of redemption. Believing that he has been called, not merely to be saved, but that hereafter, in resurrection life, he may cooperate with Christ in carrying on the redemption of the world to its full completion, it were natural that he should almost instinctively seek to qualify himself for the high position to which he is called, by using himself to the practice of such part of the work of saving men as the Lord has assigned to his church in the present dispensation. This being so, it is truly strange to hear the charge from time to time repeated that a belief

BSac 100:398 (Apr 43) p. 302

in the premillennial eschatolov “cuts the nerve of missionary effort,” and to hear it even compared in this respect with future probation theories in its pernicious effect upon the evangelistic spirit! It might rather be termed, by way of eminence, a missionary esehatology. And yet it is argued, that if a man believes that the preaching of the gospel in the present age is not designed to effect the conversion of the world, he must then lose heart and interest in the missionary work. But the objection has its basis, if we mistake not, in an almost total misunderstanding of the premillennialist position. This is exemplified in an article by Professor Curtis, of McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, in The Old Testament Student for November, 1887 (pp. 88,89), where, referring to those who fail to see in the New Testament the promise of a world-conversion antecedent to the event, he describes what he imagines to be the view of such, as “the blessing of having the gospel preache...