Rapture, Revelation, and the End Times - Conscious Evolution TV

obin-bobin The End Times According to Christians 101mentioned in Revelation 20:1–6. Advocates of postmillennialismlook for the return of Jesus after the earthly “kingdom of God.”Proponents of premillennialism expect Christ’s second comingto occur prior to the millennium, and therefore anticipate thatthe Lord will be physically present on the earth to exercisedominion during what will be his thousand-year reign. In contrastto millenarians of either persuasion, amillennialists do notanticipate that an earthly golden age will occur at some particularpoint in human history, but believe that the thousand-yearreign mentioned in Revelation 20 carries symbolic significance.Contemporary adherents of the second perspective are furtherdivided into two groups. Historic premillennialists anticipate atime of tribulation directed against the church that will climaxin Christ’s coming to rescue the community of his disciples fromthe forces of evil. The millennium, in turn, will occasion God’sblessing of Christ’s faithful followers. Dispensational premillennialists,in contrast, believe that the future tribulation and themillennium are part of God’s program for the nation of Israel.Insofar as the tribulation will be God’s opportunity to preparethe Jewish people to accept the messiah, dispensationalists theorize,the church will be raptured out of the world immediatelybefore the tribulation begins. As readers of the Left Behind novelscan easily guess, this latter perspective is set forth in the series.The following paragraphs present a synopsis of the main featuresof these four major answers to the question, “When willthis happen?” together with the biblical and theological argumentsoffered by proponents of each. In so doing, the chapterindicates that the perspective presented in the Left Behind seriesis not the only alternative to the wholesale dismissal of theexpectation of the return of Christ, which has become the“default position” in so many churches today.The Dawning of the Kingdom: PostmillennialismAlthough postmillennialism may be the least familiar—and leastunderstood—eschatological proposal today, it was the preeminentperspective in the United States from the colonial period torobin-bobin