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At a practical level, this means God’s people should preoccupy themselves with fulfilling the Great Commission and not with how the Bible supposedly predicts specific wars, earthquakes, or natural disasters.
But the fact remains that the signs of the end have not yet been fulfilled and must be before Jesus returns.
One reason for this lack of greater acceptance is the fact that amillenarians do not relate current events to the Bible. Instead, the amillennial interpretation flows from a distinctive, comprehensive Reformed theology. Therefore, amillennialism will never be as compelling a system as dispensationalism.
Another reason why amillennialism is not widely accepted among American evangelicals is that far too often people simply dismiss amillennialism without much consideration. This is, in part, because so many popular Bible teachers and prophecy experts contend that amillenarians do not take the prophetic passages of the Bible seriously.
Others label amillennialism anti-Semitic because amillenarians supposedly replace Israel with the church.
complicated argument for reading apocalyptic literature in what appears to be a nonliteral way faces an uphill struggle from the outset. Thus, it is easy for premillenarians to dismiss amillennialism as a viable alternative because it, apparently, does not comport with the plain sense of the critical millennial passage.
now we must ask our premillennial friends the obvious question: Where is the one-thousand-year gap between Christ’s return and the final judgment taught in the Scriptures? It is not there. The gap must be inserted even though doing so violates the plain sense of the passage and the premillennial insistence on a literal interpretation.
Old Testament types and shadows were subsequently reinterpreted in the New Testament in the greater light of Christ’s first coming.
When Israel’s prophets spoke of the land of Canaan, the city of Jerusalem, and the mountain of the Lord, New Testament authors pointed out that these themes were fulfilled in Christ and his church. In many instances, they did so as a polemic against Jews who did not accept Jesus as Israel’s Messiah. The literal interpretation of these Old Testament messianic passages was supplied by the New Testament.
Therefore, Old Testament prophetic expectation must not be the basis for understanding the eschatology of the New.
Even Gentiles who embrace the messianic promise through faith are Abraham’s children and members of this covenant (Rom. 4:1–25; Gal. 3:15–29). It was Paul who spiritualized the promise of a land in Palestine, which originally extended from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River (Gen. 15:18), to now include the whole world (Rom. 4:13).
amillenarians are optimistic about the kingdom of God. It is the kingdoms of this world that give amillenarians pause.
Another interpretive consequence amillenarians must face is the fact that the nation of Israel presently exists in Palestine.
But even if the land promise of the Abrahamic covenant has already been fulfilled, it is quite remarkable that the Jews have returned en masse to their ancient homeland. This is a fact that cannot be easily dismissed by amillenarians. Israel is a nation again. The Jews as a people are largely gathered together in one place. Amillenarians need to offer a cogent explanation for this amazing historical development, although we must be careful not to allow current events to determine our interpretation of a given biblical text. The answer to this problem was supplied for us by Paul in Romans 11.
If Jesus is the true temple, why would the temple be rebuilt during the millennium?
Why are those who claim to take prophetic passages literally forced to insert gaps in Daniel’s prophecy of the seventy weeks and in Jesus’s teaching about judgment occurring at his second coming?
It came as a great surprise during my seminary days when I discovered that amillenarians do take prophetic passages quite literally and that the dispensational hermeneutic drove me to literalistic interpretations of passages that were otherwise interpreted in the New Testament.
The New Testament, however, teaches that immediately before the end, God will cease to restrain Satan, and things will go from bad to worse. It is in the tumult of these days that Jesus Christ will return to raise the dead, judge the world, and make all things new. This is not only the heart of the Bible’s teaching about the future but also the heart of amillennial prophetic expectation.
