[Alex Murphy]

DrE, I have a post-millennial question. I do not understand your concern with a rising beast when postmillennialism posits an increase of kingdom Christianity and not an increase of lawlessness. Obviously, I’m misunderstanding something. Could you please fill me in?

I think what you've misunderstood is that postmillennialism does not posit an increase of kingdom Christianity over time in a straight line. Future generations can disobey. Kingdom progess can, for a time, be reversed. The postmillennialist does not mark progress in terms of decades, maybe not even in terms of centuries. Unlike the pretribber who sees history changing in a single generation, the postmiller sees things occuring over thousands of years. And inbetween, there's nothing that says things can't look a whole lot like a dress rehearsal for the Tribulation.

[editor-surveyor]

Post millenialism would appear to be mostly Kabbalah dressed up in Christian terminology.

Men, rather than Christ, ushering in the kingdom.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

I think what you've misunderstood is that postmillennialism does not posit an increase of kingdom Christianity over time in a straight line. Future generations can disobey. Kingdom progess can, for a time, be reversed. The postmillennialist does not mark progress in terms of decades, maybe not even in terms of centuries. Unlike the pretribber who sees history changing in a single generation, the postmiller sees things occuring over thousands of years. And inbetween, there's nothing that says things can't look a whole lot like a dress rehearsal for the Tribulation.

Exactly. And through it all what are Christians to do? "Rejoice evermore; pray without ceasing."

[Quix]

So . . . how does such a perspective

detect the difference between

“a dress rehersal for the Tribulation.”

and

THE REAL GREAT TRIBULATION?

And, it seems, to me, that the bulk of the REPLACEMENTARIANS et al

have already decreed by the brilliance of their tidy little boxes, that 95% of the GREAT TRIBULATION PROPHECIES

were already mystifyingly fulfilled in 70A.D.

regardless of the illogic of that; the rubber history of that etc.

[xzins]

I believe you all know that my primary eschatological perspective is pre-mil. On the other hand, I like to understand the others. I am truly not trying to be argumentative, but instead inquisitive.

And inbetween, there's nothing that says things can't look a whole lot like a dress rehearsal for the Tribulation.

My sense was that post-mil looked back into history, and that it saw either Nero or some other Caesar as the Anti-Christ. I saw it easily aligning with the preterist outlook that much of biblical prophecy had already been fulfilled. I also saw it thinking that since this tribulation was past that all that remained was the gradual displacement of the kingdoms of this world with the Kingdom of Christ, at the end point of which He would reign. At one point (that point?) this world would end and a new world would begin.

Am I correct in thinking that post-mil no longer looks for a prophesied, rising anti-christ and an accompanying period of tribulation? Your quote above would seem to indicate that sometimes things might look like such, e.g. perhaps Hitler's Europe, but that that period truly was in the early years of Christianity.

Also, if that was a past period, then what is the threat that many see with the Catholic Church, calling its pope "antichrist." Is that a metaphor for an ac-like interference with Kingdom Christianity?