Postmillennialism and World Missions

Postmillennialists believe that the Kingdom of God is already being realized in the present age through the proclamation of the gospel and through the saving influence of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of individual people. As a result, the whole world—the majority of the members of all nations including Israel, that is—will he Christianized at a future, presently unknown time. Christ will return at the end of the Millennium, an age of unknown duration, marked by justice and peace. In contrast to premillennialism, the postmillennialists therefore emphasize the present aspects of God's kingdom which will reach fruition in the future. The new age will not be essentially different from the present and will come about as more people are converted to Christ. The postmillennialist view is the only one of the three significant eschatologies based directly on the charter of Christianity, the Great Commission (Mt. 28:19-20), interpreting it not only as a command, but also as a promise and as prophecy. Postmillennialists believe that the Great Commission will he fulfilled by all nations becoming disciples.

Postmillennialism and the Missions Impulse

The roots of modern Protestant world missions lie to a great extent in the work of Calvinist, Puritan, postmillennial preachers in England and America, as well as that of Lutheran, Pietist, postmillennial pastors in Germany. The eighteenth century was the great age of postmillennialism, which played a key role in the development of missions-oriented attitudes.

The first Anglo-Saxon missionaries, who emigrated from England to America to preach to the Indians, were motivated by a Calvinist, postmillennial hope that God wanted to bring the gospel to unreached peoples and areas in order to initiate the Millennium. That postmillennial expectations led to the establishment of practical missionary activity, is true not only for the Calvinists themselves (Anglicans, Presbyterians and Congregationalists), but also for Calvinist Baptists such as William Carey whose major work, “An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians....,” initiated the final awakening of Protestant missions. As a result, definite postmillennial expectations can he discovered in the sermons held at the founding of the London Missionary Society in 1795, of the New York Missionary Society in 1797, and of the Glasgow Missionary Society in 1799. Many Calvinist missionaries and mission leaders such as John Elliot, Alexander Duff, David Livingstone, Henry Martin, Rufus Anderson, and Henry Venn expressed a postmillennial hope.

In the light of postmillennial expectations, American and British revival movements were seen as the first indications of a wider wave of conversion, expected soon to engulf the whole earth. Not only Jonathan Edwards, who sparked an extensive revival and missionary movement, but also English (Isaac Watts, Philipp Doddridge) and Scottish theologians (John Willision, John Erskin) related postmillennial hope to revival and to the idea of missions—a combination which led directly to the development of organized missionary activity at the end of the eighteenth century.

The close relationship between postmillennialism and missions can be traced through the ideas of the Reformed Puritans of America and England back to the optimism of the Reformed theologians John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, Theodore Bibliander, Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr and Thedor Beza, even though none of them expressed a postmillennial system. This had, however, already occurred in the Reformation period in England, then by leading Puritan theologians such as John Cotton, John Owen, Matthew Henry and Samuel Rutherford. For all of these Reformed men since the Reformation, the Kingdom of God still had a long period of time before it, in contrast to the immediate expectations of the end of the world of Lutheran orthodoxy. God had said that He had elected people, the predestined, in all nations of the world. The majority of Reformed theologians believed in a future full conversion of Israel through missionary activity as well. Thoman Brightman (1562-1607) was one of the first Puritans who expected the conversion of the Jews not at the end of the world, but at the beginning of the Millenium.

The Reformed Faith and Postmillennialism

With the exception of early Lutheran Pietism in Germany, the Reformed tradition was much closer to postmillennialism than were other denominations. This is mostly due to its emphasis on the sovereignty of God and to the belief that Christ is now Lord over the whole of human life. The Reformed Faith teaches, as well, that the Holy Spirit has empowered Christianity to succeed in spreading the gospel to the whole world and in transforming culture and society according to Christ's spirit and will. It is therefore not surprising that postmillennialism, with its emphasis on reaching all peoples with the gospel, has been integrated into Reformed confessions of Faith (Calvin's “Catechism of Geneva,” Question 268-270, and the “Great Catechism” of Westminster,” Question 191 [both of which concern the second request of the Lord's Prayer], the Congregationalist Savoy Declaration of 1658 in Article 26.5, an addition to the Westminster Confession). Postmillennialism offers the best explanation altogether, why the dogma of double predestination should not detract from missions but support it. Because God has proclaimed the election of many individuals out of all nations, it is now essential for His Church to find them.

The Decline of Postmillennialism

Rufus Anderson (1796-1880), Director of the ABCFM, and the most significant missions leader of the nineteenth century, became, in 1866, the first Professor of Missiology at Andover Theological Seminary. He was the first theologian to emphasize again the love for the lost as motivation for missions rather than postmillennial expectations, even though his well-known sermons, “The Time for the World's Conversion Comes” and “Promised Advent of the Spirit” clearly express a postmillennial belief. As late as 1909, W.O. Carver observed that the postmillennial view was still the most influential motivation for missions. Not until the end of the First World War did postmillennialism lose its preeminence. Following Hudson Taylor it had, in the area of world missions, however, been gradually superseded by “faith missions,” which were strongly influenced by premillennialism.

These developments in Anglo-Saxon Protestantism can be observed in German-speaking evangelical missions, as well, for Philipp Jakob Spener (1633-1705), August Hermann Francke (1663-1727), the fathers of German Pietism and its growing missions movement based their activities on postmillennial ideas. Not only Spener's major works, “Pia desideria” and “Theologische Bedencken” are eschatologically characterized by expectations of a better future, but also his previous dissertations on Revelation 9:13-21 and his “Von der Hoffnung zukunftiger besserer Zeiten” (1696). In his expression of the hope of a better future, he radically rejects the pessimistic orthodox Lutheran interpretation of history, which was determined by the expectation of Christ's immediate return within an amillennialist framework.

Postmillennialism maintained its dominant position in German Pietism until Johann Albrecht Bengel began to combine premillennialism with postmillennialism by teaching the idea of two millennia. He pupils then completely rejected postmillennialism in favor of premillennialism and taught that missions should not be carried out until the Millenium (for example, Johann Tobias Beck [1804-1871]). Many state church mission societies, such as the Baseler Mission (Theodor Oehler and Hermann Gundert, for example) continued to think in a postmillennial context. It was the rise of faith missions which hound premillennialism to an attitude positive to missions and supplanted Postmillennialism in the missionary movement.

Literature

• Beaver, R. Pierce. “Missionary Motivation Before the Revolution,” Church History, 31, 1962, 216-226.
• Beaver, R. Pierce (ed). Pioneers in Missions: A Source Boole on the Rise of American Missions to the Heathen, Wm. B. Eedrmans, Grand Rapids, Mi., 1966.
• Van den Berg, Johannes. Constrained by Jesus 'Love: An Inquiry into the Motives of the Missionary Awakening in Great Britain in the Period between 1698 and 1815, J.H. Kok, Kampen, Netherlands, 1956.
• Chaney, Charles L. The Birth of Missions in America, William Carey Library, South Pasadena, Cal. 1976.
• de Jong, J. A. As the Waters Cover the Sea: Millennial Expectations in the Rise of Anglo-American Missions, 1640-1810, J.H. Kok, Kampen, Netherlands, 1970.
• Murray, Iain. The Puritan Hope: Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy, Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, 1971.
• Pettit, Norman. “Editor's Introduction,” in Jonathan Edwards' The Life of David Brainerd, edited by Norman Pettit, Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 1985.
• Rooy, Sidney, H. The Theology of Missions in the Puritan Tradition, WD. Meinema: Delft, Netherlands, 1965.
• Toon, Peter (ed.). Puritans, the Millenium and the Future of Israel: Puritan Eschatology 1600-1660, James Clarke, Cambridge, 1970.