Full Contact Christianity

In the preceding post, I addressed the accusations of racism that often attach to premillennialism.  In this post, I’d like to discuss another accusation of racism, this one leveled by Jim Jordan against amillennialism at this year’s Auburn Avenue Pastor’s Conference.

…which brings me to amillennialism, more evil than you can imagine.  The Great Commission is a postmillennial and a theocratic command.  Let’s go over it, in case there’s somebody here who doesn’t know that.  Jesus said “All power has been given to Me.”  How much power?  I can’t hear you.  All power?  All of it?  Where?  In heaven and on earth.  Any other place besides that, that counts?  Go therefore and disciple all nations.  Which nations?  All nations.  Do what to them?  Make converts in all nations?  No, disciple all nations.  Now what do the Jews understand by “disciple all the nations?”…They’re living in [a discipled nation].

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They understand that this is a theocratic command to disciple all nations.  Is Jesus going to fail?  I can see it now…”Jesus… can come back tomorrow, He can come back any day.”  And what’s Satan going to say?  “All power, huh?  All authority in heaven and on earth, and you just couldn’t pull it off, could you, boy?”  Do you think that’s gonna happen?

I don’t.

And I think it borders on blasphemy to suggest that that’s gonna happen….Gentlemen, I don’t think we should be be very tolerant.  Premils understand that Jesus’ kingdom is going to conquer all the nations and it’s going to fulfill the purposes of this creation.  I can get along with premils.  Amils say, “God is going to toss this world; Jesus is going to fail; the nations are not going to be discipled.”  I don’t think that we can afford to be very respectful to that.

The amillennial outlook is racist. It says that because white, European civilization is falling apart, Jesus is coming soon.  Jesus isn’t really going to bring much Christianity to the black and brown and yellow people in the world.

It’s arrogant to assume that God’s center of history is on the white, European race, and because the whites are falling apart, God has got to end history.  That is arrogant.  It’s racist.  And it ends history, and this is where the problem comes in the church.  The amillennial attitude says there’s nothing new, there’s nothing more to be learned, there’s no need to have a continuing conversation….Guys who look forward to the day, a thousand years from now, when theologians in Sri Lanka bring new insights out of the book of Nehemiah — that’s not going to happen.  We don’t need new insights.  We’ve got it all written down in our confessions and catechisms and in a few of our commentaries.  Don’t tell us there’s anything new that’s going to come.  Don’t tell us that vast new insights are going to come from Africans and Asians and Polynesians, when those people, with their gifts, convert to the Lord.  No, there’s no need for any new insights.

The Eastern church stopped everything with the seventh ecumenical council.  Our amillennial brethren have stopped everything three hundred years ago.  And that’s deadly.  And it’s intolerable….It cripples the Reformed faith.  In all our Presbyterian and Reformed denominations and seminaries, we have to pretend that this is a perfectly okay way to think, and what winds up being the case is, that view dominates.  Sorry, I just don’t think we can have that.

…There’s no longer any time left to be tolerant of people who have that idea of what it means for Jesus to have all authority that He, by His Spirit and through His church, is going to disciple all nations.

Jordan says a lot of highly charged things here, as of course he is well aware.  I’m not sure he expects anyone to agree with them all.  But he does point out an important dividing line in eschatology.  Pre-, post- or amil view is less important than believing that there will be a real victory, and that God will win it, taking seriously the promise that the God will win the nations to Himself.  A premil view that takes the dominion mandate and the great commission seriously — a combination I am presently calling dominon premillennialism, for lack of a better term — is every bit as committed to this as a postmil view; we just quibble a little about the timeline.

And yet, as Jordan points out, the organizational and denominational lines are repeatedly drawn in a way that lumps postmil and amil folks together on one side of the fence, with premil folks on the other.  Why is that?

And given those choices, can anyone blame people for fleeing to the premil side of the fence, where there’s generally no need to tolerate amillennialism?