Are You Pre, Mid, or Post?

If you don't know how to answer that question, you're probably a Catholic. Most Fundamentalists and Evangelicals would know immediately what these words are shorthand for: pretribulation, midtribulation, posttribulation they all refer to when the rapture is supposed to occur. But to understand what that means, you need a little background.

The Millennium

In Revelation 20:1-3, 7-8, we read: "Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years were ended. After that he must be loosed for a little while. . . . And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the earth."

The period of a thousand years, the writer tells us, is the reign of Christ, and the thousand-year period is popularly called the millennium. The millennium is a harbinger of the end of the world, and Revelation 20 is interpreted in three ways by conservative Protestants. The three schools of thought are called postmillennialism, amillennialism, and premillennialism. Let's take a look at them.

Postmillenialism

According to Loraine Boettner in his book The Millennium (he also wrote the seriously-defective anti-Catholic book Roman Catholicism), postmillennialism is "that view of last things which holds that the kingdom of God is now being extended in the world through the preaching of the Gospel and the saving work of the Holy Spirit, that the world eventually is to be Christianized, and that the return of Christ will occur at the close of a long period of righteousness and peace, commonly called the millennium."

This view was popular with Protestants in the nineteenth century, when Progress was expected even in religion and before the horrors of the twentieth century were tasted. Today few hold to it, except such groups as Christian Reconstructionists, who consciously work for a "Christian America" in a sense that even the early Puritans hardly dreamed about.

Commentators point out that postmillennialism is to be distinguished from the view of theological and secular liberals who envision social betterment and even the Kingdom of God coming through purely natural, rather than supernatural, means. Postmillenialists argue that the gospel will be spread and the world will be Christianized purely God's supernatural power by the Holy Spirit. Man is incapable of building a paradise for himself, postmillenialists insist; the paradise will only come about by God's grace.

Postmillennialists also typically say that the millennium spoken of in Revelation 20 should be understood figuratively and that the phrase "a thousand years" refers not to a fixed period of ten centuries, but to an indefinitely long time. The number 1000 is used in Revelation 20 to indicate a very long period of time. For example, Psalm 50:10 speaks of God's sovereign rulership of all that is and tells us that God owns "the cattle on a thousand hills." This, of course, is not meant to be taken literally. In reality, God owns all cattle everywhere in the world, and there are a lot more than a thousand hills in the world, just as there are a lot more cattle in the world than could fit on a thousand hills.

At the end of the Millenium will come the Second Coming, the general resurrection of the dead, and the last judgment.

The problem with postmillenialism is that Scripture does not depict the world as experiencing a period of complete (or relatively complete) Christianization before the Second Coming. There are numerous passages which speak of the age between the First and Second Comings as a time of great sorrow and strife for Christians. One passage that is particularly revealing is the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (Matt. 13:24-30, 36-43). In this parable Christ declares that the righteous and the wicked will both be planted and grow alongside each other in God's field ("the field is the world," Matt. 13:38) until the end of the world, when they will be separated, judged, and either be thrown into the fire of hell or inherit the kingdom of God (Matt. 13:41-43). There is no biblical evidence that the world will eventually become totally (or even almost totally) "Christianized," but rather that there will always be a parallel development of the righteous and the wicked until the final judgment.

Amillenialism

Next is the amillennial or nonmillennial view, which interprets Revelation 20 symbolically and sees the millennium not as an earthly golden age in which the world will be totally Christianized, but as the present period of Christ's rule through his Church on earth.. Amillennialists don't believe in an earthly golden age but in the coexistence of good and evil on earth until the end. The golden age of the millennium is instead the heavenly reign of Christ with the saints, in which the Church on earth participates in some degree, though not in the glorious way it will at the Second Coming.

The state of tension that exists on earth between the righteous and the wicked will be resolved only by Christ's return at the end of time. Amillenialists follow Augustine and see the reign of Christ existing now in heaven and in the Church and in Christians, and they argue that an understanding of the millennium as an earthly golden age is incorrect.

To explain their view of the millennium, amillenialists point to the fact that the thrones of the saints who reign with Christ during the millennium appear to be set in heaven (Rev. 20:4; cf. 4:4, 11:16) and that the text nowhere states that Christ is on earth during this reign with the saints.

They explain that, although the world will never be fully Christianized, the millennium does have effects on earth in that Satan is bound in such a way that he cannot deceive the nations by hindering the preaching of the gospel (Rev. 20:3). They point out that Jesus spoke of the necessity of "binding the strong man" (Satan) in order to plunder his house by rescuing people from his grip (Matt. 12:29-30). Thus, when the disciples returned from a tour of preaching the gospel, rejoicing at how demons were subject to them, Jesus declared, "I saw Satan fall like lightning" (Luke 10:18). Thus for the gospel to move forward at all in the world, it is necessary for Satan to be bound in one sense, even if he may still be active in attacking individuals (1 Peter 5:8)

Premillenialism

Third on the list is premillennialism, which is currently the most popular among Fundamentalists and Evangelicals (though a century ago amillenialism was). Most of the books written about the End Times are written from a premillennial perspective. (Hal Lindsey, author of Late Great Planet Earth, is probably the best-known writer in this category.)

Like postmillenialists, premillenialists believe that the thousand years is an earthly golden age during which the world will be thoroughly Christianized. Unlike postmillenialists, they believe that it will occur after the Second Coming rather than before, so that Christ reigns physically on earth during the millennium. They believe that the Final Judgment will occur only after the millennium is over (which many, though not all of them, interpret to be an exactly one thousand year period).

The problem with premillenialism is that Scripture does not view there as being a thousand year span between the Second Coming and the Final Judgment. Christ declares: "For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done" (Matt. 16:27) and "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats . . . And they [the goats] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matt. 25:31-32, 46).

The Rapture

One doctrine premillenialists often give a great deal attention to is the doctrine of the "rapture." According to this doctrine, when Christ returns all of the elect who have died will be raised and transformed into a glorious state, along with the living elect, and then be caught up to be with Christ. The key text referring to the rapture is 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, which states: "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord."

The tricky thing about the rapture, and the point which premillenialists spend endless hours debating, is when it will occur. Premillenialists hold, as do virtually all Christians (except certain postmillenialists) that the Second Coming will be preceded by a time of great trouble and persecution of God's people (2 Thess. 2:1-4). This period is often called the Tribulation. Until a hundred and sixty years ago, all Christians agreed that the rapture (even though it was not called that at the time) would occur immediately before the Second Coming, at the close of the period of persecution. This position is today called the "post-tribulational" view because it says the rapture will come after the Tribulation.

But in the 1830s, a Scottish visionary, who belonged to a sect known as the Irvingites, claimed while in a trance that the rapture or gathering to be with Christ would occur before the period of persecution. This position, now known as the "pre-tribulational" view, was embraced by John Nelson Darby, one of the early leaders of a Fundamentalist movement which became known as Dispensationalism. Darby's pre-tribulational view of the rapture was then picked up by a man named C. I. Scofield, who taught the view in the footnotes of his Scofield Reference Bible, which was widely distributed in England and America. Many Protestants who read the Scofield Bible uncritically accepted what its footnotes said and adopted the pre-tribulational view, even though no Christian had heard of it in the previous 1800 years of Church history.

Eventually, a third position developed, known as the "mid-tribulational" view, which claims that the rapture will occur during the middle of the Tribulation. Finally, a fourth view developed which claims that there will not be a single rapture where all believers are gathered to Christ, but that there will be a series of mini-raptures that occur at different times with respect to the Tribulation.This confusion of views has led to countless books, tracts, and debates among premillenialists about when the rapture will occur, and caused the movement to split into bitterly opposed camps.The problem with all of the positions (except the historic, post-tribulational view, which was accepted by all Christians, including non-premillenialists) is that they split the Second Coming into different events. In the case of the pre-trib view, Christ is effectively thought to have three comings

This problem is highlighted by Baptist (and premillenial) theologian Dale Moody, who wrote: "Belief in a Pretribulational Rapture . . . contradicts all three chapters in the New Testament that mention the Tribulation and the Rapture together (Mark 13:24-27; Matt. 24:26-31; 2 Thess. 2:1-12). . . . The theory is so biblically bankrupt that the usual defense is made using three passages that do not even mention a Tribulation (John 14:3; 1 Thess. 4:17; 1 Cor. 15:52). These are important passages, but they have not had one word to say about a Pretribulational Rapture. The score is 3 to 0, three passages for a Post-tribulational Rapture and three that say nothing on the subject. . . . Pretribulationism is biblically bankrupt and does not know it" (The Word of Truth, 556-7).

What's the Catholic Position?

So what's the Catholic position on all this? As far as the millennium goes, we tend to agree with Augustine and, derivatively, with the amillennialists. The Catholic position has thus historically been "amillenial" (as has been the majority Christian position in general, including that of the Protestant Reformers) though Catholics do not typically use this term. The Church has rejected the premillenial position, sometimes called "milleniarianism" (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church 676). In the 1940s the Holy Office judged that premillenialism "cannot safely be taught," though the Church has not dogmatically defined this issue.With respect to the rapture, Catholics certainly believe that the event of our gathering together to be with Christ will take place, though they do not generally use the word "rapture" to refer to this event (somewhat ironically, since the term "rapture" is derived from the text of the Latin Vulgate of 1 Thess. 4:17 [Latin: rapiemur]).

Spinning Wheels?

What all this means is that the squabbles among Protestant prognosticators of the End Times are not of much interest to most Catholics, except in the sense that we like to know what our non-Catholic friends are up to.

Many of them, it seems, occupy a great deal of their time looking for signs in the heavens and in the headlines. This is especially true of premillennialists, who anxiously await the Tribulation because it will inaugurate the rapture and millennium.

This is why so many of them pounce on bad news coming from the Middle East. With the establishment of the secular state of Israel, they think they see biblical prophecy in the works, and they try to match up prophecies in Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel, and Isaiah with military and political maneuvers of the great powers.

It's an interesting pastime, perhaps, but one with obvious dangers since many Christians in the past have become very distressed and confused, believing that they were living right at the end of the world.

A more balanced perspective is given by Peter, who writes: "[T]he heavens and earth that now exist have been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. . . . Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be kindled and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire! But according to his promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you wait for these, be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace" (2 Peter 3:7-14).

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