There was a time when Reformed theologians were PostMillennial.  Charles Hodge was.  Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was too.  So was John Murry though he didn’t write about it as much.

But we’ve learned better. We now know that PostMillennialism is the enemy.

It is easy to miss this when one thinks about PostMillennialism as hope for the future through confidence in Jesus and his Spirit to overcome the world. That “happy face” of PostMillennialism hides the danger.  The perfidy of PostMillennialism is that hope in the future is a slander regarding the present and the past.

The enmity can be hidden as long as one is confident that the entire plan of the future is nothing more than the spread of one’s own (or one’s community’s) accomplishments to the unwashed masses across the globe.  But eventually one realizes that PostMillennialism cannot be limited in that way.

PostMillennialism is the ultimate doctrine for self-limitation. It means the world is young. It means the world is just beginning. It means that the world is going to change past recognition and be better for it. It means your descendants are going to live in a better place and look back on all you love, believe, and hold dear as barely tolerable–a mixture of some truth and good with a great deal of error and idiocy.

And we cannot have this. We know our children must worship us. They must forever venerate our doctrinal discoveries, our worship practices, our glorious truths and accomplishments. Just as we have faithfully venerated (or so we claim) certain past stages in history as the ultimate perfections that can never be surpassed, so must they continue the adoration. God would never have it otherwise.

Think about how we Evangelical Protestants view the “church fathers.”  About the only one we can tolerate is Augustine of Hippo.  And it is obvious as soon as you read him that he would be lost in confusion if he were to be brought back to earth today.  Both the modern Roman Catholic and Protestant churches would be alien territory.  We appreciate Augustine for his accomplishments but it is highly doubtful that he would understand our appreciation or the way he has helped bring about a new world.  Any sense of accomplishment would almost certainly be drowned out by the fact that this world is not one he could ever have envisioned.

We cannot have this.  If the future will be that alien then it must be evil, and PostMillennialism denies that fundamental fact. We need an eschatology that allows us to adore a particular point in the present and/or recent past and claim it was the most ultimate accomplishment that will ever be seen in human history between Pentecost and the Second Coming.

PostMillennialism does not allow for that confidence.  It claims our world is only half-baked and we are waiting for a better one.  It claims we will develop better theology, better worship, and better culture.  But we already have or had the best. The world is in sin for ever moving on.

The churches that do not know and venerate our heritage are in sin for not learning and venerating our history and our most revered historical periods. We need an eschatology that permits us to look down upon them for not ultimatizing our favored historical events.

The Bible is not sufficient for tomorrow. They need our light that we have safely guarded from the time it shone until now. They need to join with us in longing for the past rather than hoping for a better future.