Journal: Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal
Volume: DBSJ 30:1 (NA 2025)
Article: Why Postmillennialism Is Attractive, But Premillennialism Is Better
Author: Scott Aniol

DBSJ 30 (2025) p. 11

Why Postmillennialism Is Attractive, But Premillennialism Is Better

Scott Aniol1

Postmillennial eschatology is on the rise. In contrast to premillennialism, which affirms a literal, thousand year kingdom of Christ following the second coming, and amillennialism, which asserts that the kingdom of Christ is a present spiritual reality and that there will be no literal kingdom on earth following Christ’s return, postmillennialism holds that Christ is currently building a literal kingdom on earth through the spread of the gospel that will result in social, cultural, and political Christianization. Loraine Boettner explains,

Postmillennialism is that view of the last things which holds that the kingdom of God is now being extended in the world through the preaching of the gospel and the saving work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of individuals, that the world eventually is to be Christianized and that the return of Christ is to occur at the close of a long period of righteousness and peace commonly called the millennium.2

An eschatological position that “did not originate as a system until the early 1700s,”3 postmillennialism enjoyed widespread appeal in the

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eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly fueled by the Great Awakening and advances in science, technology, and social reform. However, postmillennial adherents declined in the twentieth century for two primary reasons. First, two world wars delivered a severe blow to postmillennialism’s optimism about the progress of world history.

But even more significantly, few postmillennialists of that time even attempted a robust exegetical defense of their view. When older postmillennialists did use Scripture, they always stressed the need for an allegorical interpretation, even tracing their hermeneutic directly to Origen.4 For example, James Snowden argued in 1919, “It is true that many of these prophecies when so applied must be taken poetically and not literally.”5 One later example of this lack of exegetical basis is illustrated in George Ladd’s response to Loraine Boettner’s argument for postmillennialism in the 1977 The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views. Ladd’s response filled only half a page, and began with, “There is so little appeal to Scripture that I have little to criticize.”6 Ironically, even defenders of the postmillennial position during that sa...