AMEN!
There are consequences!
That truth is what sent me into the Postmil camp. I asked my husband once why he wasn't a premil or amil since it looked like everything was going downhill fast.
After giving me many clear verses which illustrated the Bible's success, he reminded me that the best way to fail is to believe failure is the intended outcome.
That's the defeatist rationale behind doling out condoms to 13-year-olds -- since they're going to have sex anyway they might as well fail more "carefully."
It's Satan who rules by the negative. His "conspiracy" asserts that Christ will not succeed in making footstools of His enemies. What better way to discourage evangelizing the world than to say our preaching will ultimately fail?
Don't believe it.
All eschatology is "political," even Postmil. The world wants us ineffectual, so they invent Premil. The world wants us aloof, so they invent Amil. The world wants us divided and worried, so they invent Dispensationalism.
But Christ invented the political POV of Postmillenialism (John 16) and it grew, being carried into the world by His apostles. Like a pebble in a pond, the word of God goes forth and expands exponentially.
Just as it is supposed to do.
Resist the fears and malaise and apathy and divisiveness. The world is hearing the Gospel; men are being converted to the truth, by God's will.
Maybe the premil POV is more prevalent among Arminians because they believe salvation is a cooperative effort between men and God. And men can fail.
We Reformed know that salvation is by God's grace alone, and so our faith is in His ability, and not our own.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" -- Matthew 28:18-20.
"We believe that the Great Commission includes not merely the formal and external announcement of the gospel preached as a "witness" to the nations, as the premillennialists and amillennialists hold, but the true and effectual evangelization of all the nations so that the heart and lives of the people are transformed by it. That seems quite clear from the fact that all authority in heaven and on earth and an endless sweep or conquest has been given to Christ, and through him to his disciples specifically for that purpose. They were commanded not merely to preach but to make disciples of all the nations. It was no doubtful experiment to which they were called, but to a sure triumph. The preaching of the gospel under the direction of the Holy Spirit during this dispensation is, therefore, the all sufficient means for accomplishing that purpose." -- Lorraine Boettner, "Postmillennialism," in The Meaning of the Millennium, ed. Robert G. Clouse, pp. 117-118.
Some Postmils -- Oswald T. Allis, Athanasius, Augustine, Lorainne Boettner, Joachim of Fiore, John Calvin, David Chilton, Robert Lewis Dabney, John Jefferson Davis, Jonathan Edwards, Eusebius, Kenneth Gentry, A.A. Hodge, Charles Hodge, J. Marcellus Kik, J. Gresham Machen, Iain Murray, John Owen, W.G.T. Shedd, R. C. Sproul, Augustus H. Strong, J.H. Thornwell, B.B. Warfield, Greg Bahnsen.
"Evangelical Postmillennialists teach the glorious, personal return of Jesus Christ at the end of history to judge the world." - Greg Bahnsen.
"...at the end of history."
B.B. Warfield?!?
Maybe I need to reexamine my position....
I know it was probably an oversight, but John Wesley was also postmil.
The one thing he was off his flippin' rocker about.
Christ's return to a totally depraved world, given totally depraved inhabitants, is not a sign of failure at all. It sounds more like a sign of reality.
That would be like calling the crucifixion a failure.