Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 99:394 (Apr 1942)
Article: Premillennialism: Its Relations to Doctrine and Practice Part 1
Author: S. H. Kellogg

BSac 99:394 (Apr 42) p. 235

Premillennialism: Its Relations to Doctrine and Practice
Part 1

S. H. Kellogg

(Reprinted from the April-June Number, 1888)

The great and increasing interest in eschatology is one of the most conspicuous features of the religious life of our times. It is manifest even in the secular sphere. The various schemes of socialism, communism, and even anarchism, are all essentially eschatologic in their character, in that they all seek to produce an ideally perfect state on earth, the absolute ultimatum of human progress.1 In the religious sphere the same interest is evinced by the activity of discussion concerning the future of the individual,-conditional immortality, restorationism, future probation, and so on; as also in the increasing study of unfulfilled prophecy regarding the future of the race on earth. Under this last head specially noticeable is the evidently rising interest in the question of the premillennial advent. As on the doctrinal side the question has come up in connection with the interpretation of Scripture by eminent exegetes like Alford, Tregelles, Lange, Ellicott, and others, so it no less naturally emerges on the practical side of Christian life, in connection with the great revival of active interest in the evangelization of the world. For the more that this work demands of men and money, the more urgent it is felt to be that, if possible, the church should be assured beyond doubt as to the Scripture teaching concerning the purpose of the Lord in this work. Hence interest in the controversy steadily increases, and, more and more, men among the ablest in the church are

BSac 99:394 (Apr 42) p. 236

coming out as participants in the discussion on the one side of the question or the other. While there are many by whom premillennialism is, to say the least, exceedingly disliked, and who would that, if it were possible, the present agitation of the subject might die out, yet when the generation has brought forth men such as Alford, Godet, Delitzsch, Birks, Auberlen, Van Oosterzee, and many others of like standing, as advocates of one form or other of premillennialism, it is felt more and more that the subject cannot well be ignored, as if it were merely a fantastic dream of weak-minded and fanatical enthusiasts, or of ill-balanced and ill-educated theologians.

And yet because many have been accustomed all their life to associate in their minds such views with such a class of persons, and have therefore not thought it worth their while to examine into the subject closely,2 one often has occasion to observe that many otherwise intelligent Christians, and even some learned theologians, labor under the...